Applying the Montreal Taxonomy to State of the Art E-Negotiation Systems

摘要

Electronic marketplaces differ from traditional markets by the fact that they are completely designed - not just evolving. By means of appropriate trading rules, electronic negotiations can attain a fair or/and efficient allocation of resources utilizing the decentralized knowledge. On the other hand, an inappropriate design can entail distortions in allocation. But what is an appropriate design? Every new marketplace has to answer this question; every incumbent marketplace has to verify whether the current design is still the most adequate one. The MT can help improve the design process in two ways. First, the analysis of negotiation scenarios can be enhanced taking into account that different negotiation scenarios, which belong to the same class, share the same characteristics and are therefore expected to work in the same domain. This is especially important when new negotiation scenarios are developed. Second, the conceptual selection of the most adequate negotiation scenario out of the space of possible negotiations can be significantly streamlined: instead of investigating a rather large number of possible negotiation scenarios before the selection can be performed, it is sufficient to observe only a single class scenario. As previously mentioned, "conceptual" refers to the general properties a negotiation system must have in order to meet the requirements. The concrete design of the negotiation process, that is the governing and sequencing of offers and other messages is, however, not supported.