Intelligent Clearinghouse: Electronic Marketplace with Computer-Mediated Negotiation Supports

In this paper, we propose an intelligent clearinghouse, an electronic marketplace with computer-mediated negotiation that supported with both data and textual information about the dynamic markets. Most existing electronic market systems support relatively stable markets: traders are not allowed to revise their bids and offers once they are entered to the system. The intelligent clearinghouse addresses dynamic markets where buyers and sellers are willing to change their utilities as market evolves or when more information become available to them. Traders in dynamic markets may suffer significant losses if they fail to execute transactions promptly or cannot utilize all the available information. We developed a prototype Virtual Property Agency to study the usefulness of such approach. The system was developed with agent technologies, where information, particularly the text files, about the market will be automatically collected by searching engine from the selected web sites for users to design their negotiation strategies. This system also supports multi-criteria negotiation and allows the users to enter the ranking of attributes to create utility function. The system aims to improve the transparency and efficiency of the real estate market. It enables traders to compromise their original utilities to avoid transaction failures. This paper also describes the foundation of the intelligent clearinghouse system and its trading mechanism, which include a short discussion about its order matching method and negotiation support capabilities.