Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce II [electronic resource] : Towards Next-Generation Agent-Based Electronic Commerce Systems /

Shopbots and Pricebots -- Civil Agent Societies: Tools for Inventing Open Agent-Mediated Electronic Marketplaces -- Legal Issues for Personalised Advertising on Internet: The AIMedia Case Study -- Energy Resellers - An Endangered Species? -- Modeling Supply Chain Formation in Multiagent Systems -- Jangter: A Novel Agent-Based Electronic Marketplace -- Bid Selection Strategies for Multi-agent Contracting in the Presence of Scheduling Constraints -- Resource Allocation Using Sequential Auctions -- Profit-Driven Matching in E-Marketplaces: Trading Composable Commodities -- Two-Sided Learning in an Agent Economy for Information Bundles -- Optimal Auction Design for Agents with Hard Valuation Problems -- Auctions without Auctioneers: Distributed Auction Protocols.

The Internet is spawning many new markets and electronic commerce is changing many market conventions. Not only are old commercial practices being adapted to the new conditions of immediacy brought forth by the global networks, but new products and services, as well as new practices, are beginning to appear. There is already ample evidence that agent-based technologies will be crucial for these - velopments. However many theoretical, technological, sociological, and legal - pects will need to be addressed before such opportunities become a significant reality. In addition to streamlining traditional transactions, agents enable new types of transactions. For example, the elusive one-to-one marketing becomes more of a - ality when consumer agents capture and share (or sell) consumer demographics. Prices and other transaction dimensions need no longer to be fixed; selling agents can dynamically tailor merchant offerings to each consumer. Economies of scale become feasible in new markets when agents negotiate on special arbitration c- tracts. Dynamic business relationships will give rise to more competitively agile organizations. It is these new opportunities combined with substantial reduction in transaction costs that will revolutionize electronic commerce.