An Alternating-Offers Bargaining Based Mechanism for Bilateral Multi-goal Negotiations in Electronic Commerce Setting

Abstract

In the multi-agent system (MAS), negotiation is a means for agents to communicate and compromise (concession) to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, and can be viewed as a bargaining process. By the games theory, there are three crucial features in such a process: the time constraint of the bargainers, the information state of the bargainers and the number of issues (goals) to be bargained over. Against this background, this paper develops an alternating-offers bargaining based mechanism for bilateral multi-goal and incomplete information negotiation in electronic commence environment. In particular, we are concerned with the change of negotiation strategies of the both sides. So we present some strategy rules which the agents should observe during the course of negotiation. Our analysis shows the existence of equilibrium through these strategy rules. Furthermore, we also have a discussion on the satisfiability condition of a deal. Experimental results of simulation during the negotiation process indicate that the strategy rules are efficient for the negotiation.