Alternate Strategies for a Win-Win Seeking Agent in Agent-Human Negotiations.

Author List: Yang, Yinping; Singhal, Sharad; Xu, Yunjie;
Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 223-256.
With the growth of e-commerce and e-markets, there is an increasing potential for the use of software agents to negotiate business tasks with human negotiators. Guided by design science methodology, this research prescribes and validates a win-win seeking negotiation agent using strategies of "simultaneous-equivalent offers" and "delayed acceptance" and compares their effects against the use of conventional sequential-single offer and immediate acceptance strategies. To evaluate the alternate strategies, a negotiation agent system was implemented and an experiment was conducted in which 110 agent-human dyads negotiated over a four-issue online purchase task. Our results indicate that the proposed agent strategies can enhance the economic performance of the negotiated outcome (counterpart agreement ratio, individual utility, joint utility, and the distance to Pareto-efficient frontier) and maintain the human counterparts' positive perceptions toward the outcome and the agent. The findings confirm the efficacy of the proposed design and showcase an innovative system to facilitate e-commerce transactions.
Keywords: agent-human negotiation; delayed acceptance; design science; electronic markets; negotiation agent; simultaneous-equivalent offers; win-win negotiation
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#34 0.180 negotiation negotiations using potential power agreement paper bases partners ending negotiators offers visualization messaging instant audio e-marketplaces provide positions agents
#258 0.137 information proximity message seeking perceived distance communication overload context geographic dispersed higher geographically task contexts recipient face-to-face temporal safe dyadic
#71 0.103 distributed agents agent intelligent environments environment smart computational environmental scheduling human rule using does embodied provide trends computer-aided heterogeneous inventory
#176 0.103 e-commerce value returns initiatives market study announcements stock event abnormal companies significant growth positive using methodology investments period time initiative
#287 0.080 design systems support development information proposed approach tools using engineering current described developing prototype flexible built architecture environment integrated designing
#42 0.075 perceived results study field individual support effects microcomputer pressure external usefulness test psychological obligations characteristics variables indicate existence availability investigating
#10 0.061 strategies strategy based effort paper different findings approach suggest useful choice specific attributes explain effective affect employ particular online control
#270 0.058 design designs science principles research designers supporting forms provide designing improving address case little space criteria methods increasing synthesis designer