A trading mechanism based on interpersonal relationship in agent-based electronic commerce

Recently, electronic commerce has been increasing and is also a promising field of applied multiagent technology. In the automated electronic marketplace, agents can trade as buyers and sellers. Buyers and sellers agents evaluate each tradable item with each other, and buy/sell the item. Many electronic commerce sites provide high anonymity for sellers and buyers. Even though there is a special relationship between them such as friends in real world, they generally can not know their individual information in electronic commerce. In actual trade in real world, item's price is sometimes affected by the relationship between them. This paper focuses on the trading in which buyers and sellers have an asserted relationship such as colleague in a company. This paper analyzes items' values which is defined by items' prices and the relationships. Also, we propose a trading protocol including the relationship between sellers and buyers based on the analysis. In the protocol, first, the seller and the buyer evaluate the relationship. Then, the successful trader is determined based on synthesis evaluations. Finally, the seller and successful buyers trade with each other in the calculated price. The Advantage of our protocol is that appropriate evaluations of trading partners can be obtained by various attributes based on Multi-Attribute Utility Theory.