Multiple Criteria Combinatorial Auction:A B2B Allocation Mechanism for Substitute Goods

摘要

We present business-to-business electronic auctionmechanism as an alternative to sales usuallyaccomplished through negotiation. The mechanismallows bids that are incompletely specified yet provide anevaluative framework to facilitate the allocation ofcomplementary goods when substitutes are available. Theauction form allows the consumer to create a uniquecombination of goods upon which to place a multiplecriteria bid. Bidders are given the flexibility to changeand or modify their bids and bundles until a stoppingcriterion has been reached. The allocation to biddersrequires solving a complex combinatorial problem in realtime.Since the proposed integer program model maybecome computationally intractable as the number ofbidders increase, we present simplifying heuristics tomake the problem manageable on a large scale.(Combinatorial Auction, Integer Programming, ConstraintProgramming, Multi-criteria Auction, Greedy Algorithm,Advertising).