On the Use of Fuzzy Logic in Electronic Marketplaces

Today, there is a large number of product providers in the Web. Electronic Marketplaces (EMs) enable entities to negotiate and trade products. Usually, intelligent agents assume the responsibility of representing buyers or sellers in EMs. However, uncertainty about the characteristics and intentions of the negotiating entities is present in these scenarios. Fuzzy Logic (FL) theory presents a lot of advantages when used in environments where entities have limited or no knowledge about their peers. Hence, entities can rely on a FL knowledge base that determines the appropriate action on every possible state. FL can be used in offers, trust, or time constraints definition or when an agent should decide during the negotiation process. The autonomic nature of agents in combination with FL leads to more efficient systems. In this chapter, the authors provide a critical review on the adoption of FL in marketplace systems and present their proposal for the buyer side. Moreover, the authors describe techniques for building FL systems focusing on clustering techniques. The aim is to show the importance of FL adoption in such settings.