'Developments in intelligent support for e-Commerce negotiation applications'

摘要

In this special section in vol. 4, no. 4, we address some interesting new research approaches and findings how to improve the operation of e-market places and mediated supply chains in matching supply and demand. The papers for the special section were selected and further revised from the agent technology track of 6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce (www.ICEC04. net), held last October in Delft, the Netherlands. Together they represent a broad cross-section of the state of the art in the application of agent technology, operations research and artificial intelligence in the search for optimal trading through brokered and negotiated e-markets. Most of the papers are still rather theoretical in nature and had to rely on computer simulations for testing the applied algorithms and agents' behavior. This stage is not surprising when considering the innovative concepts, ideas and results presented in the papers. Notwithstanding that limitation, we consider the reported results encouraging enough and of such a high standard, that practitioners and entrepreneurs may see real opportunities for new commercial service propositions in existing e-markets.