The advent of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce market has created needs and opportunities for firms to negotiate deals online. Most negotiation support systems (NSS) in past research are text-based and the related findings could not be generalized to negotiating situations utilizing advanced electronic communication technology. This paper investigates the impact of NSS and conflict level on negotiation outcomes where participants communicated through a videoconferencing channel. Findings suggested that dyads with videoconferencing NSS support achieved higher joint outcome, but spent more time in reaching agreements - in low but not high conflict negotiation situation. Conclusion and implications were drawn.

Electronic negotiation systems support negotiators in reaching an agreement through collaboration among the involved parties. The development of these systems requires the use of a negotiation methodology and the specification of a negotiation protocol. This contribution presents the foundation of a negotiation methodology and a prototype built upon the methodology which is capable of executing multiple negotiation protocols. The prototype demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach, and is currently evaluated in a computer based laboratory experiment.