A Conceptual Architecture for a Combined Negotiation Support System

In a combined negotiation in e-commerce, the user is interested in many goods or services and consequently engages in many negotiations at the same time. The negotiations are independent of each other, whereas the goods or services are typically interdependent. Using currently available negotiation technology, the user conducts each negotiation separately, and has the burden of coordinating and reconciling them. In our research, we aim to provide a Combined Negotiation Support System (CNSS) to help the user conduct all the negotiations at the same time. The CNSS will enable the user to control and monitor the progress of the negotiations, and will make sure that the specified dependencies are respected. The architecture of the CNSS relies on workflow technology and on negotiating software agents. The paper starts by presenting the problem and giving an overview of the envisioned CNSS. Then, underlying concepts and technology are discussed, and the proposed architecture is detailed. The paper concludes with a discussion of related work.