A generic product ontology based on software agents incorporating negotiation and decision support techniques

The phenomenal growth of Internet-based information services and infrastructure in the recent years has provided a new technological basis for enabling and expanding the electronic execution of commercial transactions both on a business-to-business (B2B) and on a business-to-consumer (B2C) level. Electronic Marketplaces have increasingly played the role of an aggregator that merges potentially thousands of vendors and customers either as B2C virtual malls or as B2B electronic hubs. Virtually every working hub or marketplace focuses on either B2B or B2C business transactions. An integration of both categories would yield a generic e-hub made for all stakeholders across the process flows and covering every step of the way from production to consuming. The aim of this paper is to propose a novel architecture for the creation of economically viable e-hubs. We have argued that this can be accomplished through the ability of an agent-based electronic marketplace to transcend other taxonomical classification dimensions and, simultaneously, through the provision of an anthropocentric negotiation model and a flexible and “active” decision support. We have introduced a generic agent-based electronic marketplace architecture, comprising its three major components: ontology, negotiation and advising. According to the architecture proposed, we implemented the generic product ontology for the e-hub, focusing on its evaluation by using appropriate standards and widely accepted methodologies as well as other ontologies. We have also implemented a negotiation and a decision support system that come together and interact defining as a whole the functionality of the system.