Constraint Search for Comparing Multiple-Incentive Merchandises

This paper discusses about electronic commerce trading merchandises having multiple and various incentives. Incentives here mean sellers’ conditions for promoting certain types of merchandises. Typical examples of incentives are discounts on not-popular items. Buyers need to compare not only prices and contents but also incentives, and know reasons why one product is expensive than others. In this paper, we introduce a framework to support selections of multiple-incentive merchandises, by representing incentives using constraints, and offering constraint search mechanism to examine and compare those incentives. A typical example of multiple-incentive merchandises is airline tickets, where various prices are supplied according to restrictions. We show how complex incentives of airline tickets can be represented as constraints and can be queried using dynamic constraint databases.