Arena: Simulating E-commerce Agent Strategies

Arena is a software package intended to help e-commerce strategy researchers and designers test buying and selling strategies under different scenarios. It implements and adheres to a set of design criteria intended to ensure its simulation ability as well as prolonging its usable lifetime. The process of implementing Arena involved conducting background research into current strategies and the requirements they impose on a simulator as well as implementing a simple prototype simulator. Arena was used to evaluate aspects of Sardine, a system which models an airline selling tickets to potential buyers. Sardine showed Arena proficiency in implementing systems that provide meaningful results. However, Sardine also revealed some minor weaknesses in Arena's design that would benefit from additional research. Thesis Supervisor: Professor Pattie Maes Title: Associate Director, MIT Media Lab Software Agents Group