Shopbots and Pricebots in Electronic Service Markets
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper explores the role of shopbot and pricebot software agents in electronic service markets, where users have to wait to obtain the service or product because sellers can only process requests at a finite rate. In our model, we consider a stream of customers that arrive in a market and, based on their expected utility costs, choose a seller from which they receive service, and we explore the effects of changing the information and capabilities available to buyers and sellers. We show that widely held beliefs such as “sellers are better off colluding by not accepting shopbots” and “removing information asymmetries and lowering search costs results to higher overall market performance”, are in reality dependent on the model structure and efficiency measures used.
منابع مشابه
Shopbots and Pricebots
Shopbots are software agents that automatically gather and collate information from multiple on-line vendors about the price and quality of consumer goods and services. Rapidly increasing in number and sophistication, shopbots are helping more and more buyers minimize expenditure and maximize satisfaction. In response to this trend, it is anticipated that sellers will come to rely on pricebots,...
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“Shopbots, agents that automatically search the Internet for goods and/or services on behalf of consumers, herald a future in which autonomous agents become an essential component of nearly every facet of electronic commerce. . . . Moreover, we predict the emergence of pricebots economically motivated agents that set prices so as to maximize the profits of firms, just as shopbots seek prices th...
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