Multi-Agent Systems & E-Commerce

1. Multi-Agent Systems & E-Commerce Martin Beer, School of Computing & Management Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom m.beer@shu.ac.uk

2. Agents for e-Commerce Agents for eCommerce • e-Commerce • Consumer's buying behavior • Agents as mediators in eCommerce • Information economy

3. Electronic commerce Components • interactive business and financial transaction • electronic cataloguing • electronic order tracking services • automatic billing and payment services • electronic funds transfer • vendor registration and electronic "brand naming" • automatic ordering, contracting and procurement • data mining of consumer information for customer profiling • advertising of products and customization of advertisements 3

4. Transactions business-to-business business-to-consumer consumer-to-consumer Difficulties of e-Commerce The Web has a number of features that limits its use as an "information market" Problems related to using the Web for eCommerce:  Trust  Privacy and security  Billing  Reliability 4

5. Consumer's buying behavior Marketing Consumer's Buying Behavior (CBB) research - a number of models of the consumer's behavior Most common stages; a simplification; some stages may overlap CBB - Guttman e.a., 1998  Need investigation  Product brokering  Merchant brokering  Negotiation  Purchase and delivery  Product service and evaluation 5

6. 1.3 Agents as mediators in eCommerce Most appropriate for mediating behaviors involving information filtering and retrieval, personalized evaluation, complex coordination and negotiation Persona Bargain Auction Fish Logic Firefly Finder Jango Kasbah Bot T@T Market Need identification Product brokering Merchant brokering Negotiation Purchase and delivery Product service 6

7. Persona Logic (a) Comparison shopping agents  Search online shops to find products, merchants and best deals Product brokering • guides the consumers through a large product feature space • allows shoppers to specify constraints on a product and scores the products • CSP engine: hard constraints and soft constraints 7

8. Firefly BargainFinder • helps consumers find products • uses "word of mouth" recommendations • ACF = Automated Collaborative Filtering • identifies the shopper's "nearest neighbours" and offers products highly rated by them Merchant brokering • the first agent for price comparison • given a specific product, the agent requests its price from each of nine different merchant Web sites using the same http request as a Web browser • Problem: some merchants block access to their prices; other merchants volunteer their prices 8

9. Jango • helps users decide what to buy • finds specifications and product reviews • makes recommendations to the user • performs comparison shopping for the best buy • monitors "what's new" lists, watches for special offers • Problem = Web pages are different; exploits:  Navigation regularities  Corporate regularities  Vertical separation • has 2 key components:  a component to learn vendor description  a comparison shopping component • Solves the merchant blocking issue by having the product requests originating from each consumer's Web browser instead of a centralised site as in BargainFinder  appear as requests from real customers 9

10. Product brokering and merchant brokering agents use information filtering techniques • content-based filtering, e.g. associative networks of keywords as in Jango • constraint-based filtering, like in PersonaLogic, T@T • collaborative-based filtering, like in Firefly 10

11. Kasbah (b) Auction bots  Agents that can organize and/or participate in online auctions for goods Aim = develop a Web-based system in which users can create their own agents to buy and sell goods on their behalf User options:  Create a new buying agent  Create a new selling agent  See currently active agents  Create a new finding agent  Browse the marketplace for active agents 11

12. Selling agent parameters set by the user: - desired date to sell the good - desired price to sell the good - minimum price to sell at - "decay" function of the price over time to determine the current offer price • anxious - linear function • cool headed - quadratic function • frugal - exponential function • Buying agent parameters set by the user - date to buy the item by - desired price - maximum price - "growth" function of price over time 12

13. Tête-à-tête • Kasbah agents operate in a marketplace • The marketplace manages a number of ongoing auctions matching requests for goods with offers • Negotiation protocol - buying agents offer bids to sellers - selling agents respond with yes or no • User agents negotiate across multiple attributes of a transaction, e.g., warranty length and options, shipping time and cost, service contract, return policy, quantity, accessories, credit options, payment options • Agents quantify those aspects using a multi-attribute utility function 13

14. Fishmarket • A virtual institutions corresponding to a traditional fish market which exists in Blanes (Girona) a small fishermen's village in Spain BA SA 5 basic scenes BA = buyer's admitter SA = seller's admitter BM =buyer's manager SM = seller's manager Auct = auctioner Buyer's register Goods' register Goods show and auction Auct SM BM Sellers' settlements Credits and goods delivery 14

15. Market operation (simplified) 1. Open auction and register sellers (SA) 2. Collect products from sellers (SM) 3. Collect buyers (BA) 4. Present products at price w (4.. 7 - Auct) 5.if silence then decrease w go to 4 6.if first bid w' w then adjudicate product 8. Verify credit (BM) go to 8 9.if not solvable (BM) 7.if two equal bids then fine or expell then increase w increase w to x * w' go to 4 10.else sell product update buyer's credit (BM) update seller's credit (SM) 15

16. The first valid offer is the one to win the round • An offer is valid if the bidder has enough credit to pay for that bid • Fishmarket was also tested for closed bid auctions and Vickrey auctions • Does not automate negotiation Problems with auction bots Main difficulty - trust if: • the agent really understands what the user wants • the agent is not going to be exploited by other agent • the agent does not end up with a poor agreement 16

17. 1.4 Information economy • University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) is structured as a collection of agents that can buy and sell services from each other • Treating a library as an information economy provides a framework for making decentralised decisions about allocation of limited information goods and services available • The services and protocols offered by UMDL infrastructure are called SMS = Service Market Society 17

18. Find phase Bid phase SCA Query phase QPA QPA AMA UIA CIA Auction Registry The Service Market Society implements a multi-agent information economy where agents buy and sell services from each other. 2 4 1 Label Info resources 3 Query 8 5 6 Match me with a buyer at a price 2 Match me with a seller at a price 7 6 9 Query 18

19. Ontology of services • SCA classifies the service description into a sub-sumption-based taxonomy  SCA matches requests for services to "semantically close" descriptions • Auction specification • type of good • timing requirements • terms - per-query or subscription (how is bundled) - topic, audience - redistribute or read-only (terms) - individual or library or group (to whom is sold) • how often the auction is cleared • price determination rule • what info is publically available 19

20. QPAs bid their marginal cost = what it would cost them to provide another unit of the product Cost(query) = A * load2 + B * load MarginalCost(query) = 2 * A * load + B • The Auction matches current lowest price seller with a buyer if the buyer's bid is above that price • Once a transaction occurs, both buyers and sellers are removed from the active list and the QPA recomputes its marginal cost based on having an additional query to process • Then QPA submits a new, higher sell offer to the auction 20

21. References • M. Wooldrige. An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, John Wiley&Sons, 2002, Ch.11, p.243-266. • R. Guttman, A. Mokas, P. Maes. Agents as mediators in electronic commerce. In Intelligent Information Agents, M. Klush (Ed.), Springer Verlag 1999, p.131-152. • P. Noriega, C. Sierra. Auctions and multi-agent systems. In Intelligent Information Agents, M. Klush (Ed.), Springer Verlag 1999, p.153-175. • E. Durfee, e.a.. Strategic reasoning and adaptation in an information economy. In Intelligent Information Agents, M. Klush (Ed.), Springer Verlag 1999, p.176-203. • W. Brenner, R. Zarnekov, H. Witting. Intelligent Software Agents, Springer Verlag, 1998, Ch.6, p.267-299. 21

22. Agent systems references • BargainFinder - part of "Smart Store Virtual" by Anderson Consulting • Jango - Netbot Inc., Seattle, USA • PersonaLogic - Reordan, Soresen, 1995 Software Agents Group, MIT Media Lab http://agents.media.mit.edu/projects/ • Kasbah - project of MIT Media Lab, Chaves, Maes, 1996 • Tête-à-Tête - Guttman, Maes, 1998 • Firefly - Shardanand, Maes, 1995 Firefly Networks (does not exist any more) AgentBuilder • Auction Agents for the Electric Power Industry http://www.agentbuilder.com/Documentation/EPRI/index.html • Fishmarket - Noriega, Sierra, 1997 • UMDL - University of Michigan, Durfee e.a., 1997 • InfoSleuth http://www.argreenhouse.com/InfoSleuth/index.shtml • Retsina http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~softagents/retsina_agent_arch.html 22