Dynamic Supply Chain Structuring for Electronic Commerce Among Agents

Electronic commerce and the vast amounts of real-time information available through means of EDI and the Internet are reshaping the way enterprises conduct business. A new computational infrastructure and models are needed for a business to gain a competitive edge through effective use of this information base. One of the key issues in competing in the electronic marketplace is product/service differentiation. Currently there are no computational models for multi-issue decision making in electronic commerce. We develop a model of inter-organizational electronic commerce that explores various new choices and opportunities that the electronic marketplace offers. The particular motivating applications of our work ∗ This research has been sponsored in part by ONR Grant No. N00014-96-1-1222, and by NSF grant #IRI-9612131.