Integrated business agents for processing free text information

Abstract

The Internet functions as an increasingly important channel for retailing commerce and business transactions. Although nearly five billion web sites exist on the World Wide Web, an integrated mediator, called a business agent, is sought to negotiate between suppliers and buyers. Such an intelligent business broker is thus necessary to support efficient and effective sharing of information. This work proposes an entirely new business agent architecture comprised of five elements, namely Business Spy Agent, Supply and Demand Analysis, Supply and Demand Classification, Matching and Negotiation, and Hidden Business Mining. The proposed architecture encompasses four trading processes, including Supply and demand identification, product brokering, merchant brokering and negotiation. The architecture introduces the notion of ontology to increase the precision of classification and more the effectiveness of negotiation. Experiments involving the proposed business agent show a significant successful pairing rate of 82% among suppliers and buyers. Simulation results indicate that the options, including Negotiable, Designated Brand and Split Demand, affect the match ratio differently from various perspectives.