Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved in buying and selling products over the internet. The need for handling complex highly configurable products, together with presenting important merchant value-added services gave rise to integrative negotiation protocols. In this paper we introduce GAMA, an agent-mediated shopping system that allows shoppers to consider merchant offerings’ full range of value in their buying decisions for complex products. The system helps shoppers through the two stages of product brokering and negotiation. Product Brokering is done through shopping agents adopting genetic algorithms to address the vast search space of product offerings. Integrative Negotiation is implemented using a “Collaborative GA” technique between both shopping and sales agents to satisfy the needs of both parties. The system has been simulated using the process of purchasing computers hardware. Results show that a high rate of satisfaction for bot...
Magda Bahaa Eldin Fayek, Ihab A. Talkhan, Khalil S