Transforming Commerce as we Know It

Software agents have become very popular in the last six or so years. They have been used successfully to filter information, match people with similar interests and automate repetitive behavior. More recently, the capabilities of agents have been applied to electronic commerce, promising a revolution in the way we conduct transactions, whether business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or consumer-to-consumer. This article surveys the technologies involved in buying and selling agents and discusses several agent-mediated electronic commerce systems in the context of a general model of the buying process.