Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved in buying and selling products over the Internet. Although shopping agents provide convenience for consumers and yield more efficient markets, today's first-generation shopping agents are limited to comparing merchant offerings only on price instead of their full range of value. As such, they do a disservice to both consumers and retailers by hiding important merchant value-added services from consumer consideration. Likewise, the increasingly popular online auctions pit sellers against buyers in distributive negotiation tug-of-wars over price. This paper analyzes these approaches from economic, behavioral, and software agent perspectives then proposes integrative negotiation as a more suitable approach to retail electronic commerce. Finally, we identify promising techniques (e.g., multi-attribute utility theory, distributed constraint satisfaction, and conjoint analysis) for implementing agent-mediated integrative negotiation. 1.

A key lesson learned from economic and game theory research is that negotiation protocols have substantial, rippling effects on the overall nature of the system. online auctions are increasingly popular negotiation protocols for software agents (and humans) to compete on the prices of goods and services. This paper takes a critical look at these competitive protocols in retail markets from economic, game theoretic, and business perspectives. Our analysis suggests that online auction protocols are, in fact, less efficient and more hostile than would be expected (or desired) in retail markets. Furthermore, we identify the importance of customer satisfaction and propose more cooperative multi-agent decision analysis tools (e..g, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) and negotiation protocols (e.g., Distributed Constraint Satisfaction) as promising techniques to support it. 1. Retail Market Negotiations Today's mass market retail is largely defined as monopolistic competition [...

This paper takes a critical look at these competitive protocols in retail markets from economic, game theoretic, and business perspectives. Our analysis suggests that online auction protocols are, in fact, less efficient and more hostile than would be expected (or desired) in retail markets. Furthermore, we identify the importance of customer satisfaction and propose more cooperative multiagent decision analysis tools (e..g, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) and negotiation protocols (e.g., Distributed Constraint Satisfaction) as promising techniques to support it