Design of Roles and Protocols for Electronic Negotiations

Support for negotiations in electronic markets is one of the primary issues in today’s e-commerce research. Whereas most activities are focused on automation aspects, only few efforts address the design of electronic negotiations. However, for the efficiency of electronic negotiation processes and the success of resulting settlements, it is essential to achieve an a-priori agreement among the negotiating parties about issues such as the syntax and semantics of offer specifications, the sequence of actions, possible responses, or time constraints, because these factors might influence, for instance, the fairness of the electronic negotiation. This paper demonstrates how an explicit and specific design can capture the way electronic negotiations are organised. The organisation design meta-model presented is part of SILKROAD, a design and application framework for electronic negotiations. On the basis of this framework, organisations creating an electronic market or sellers intending to offer potential buyers the option to bargain, can generate, in a flexible and efficient way, customised electronic negotiation systems supporting the roles and protocols designed. Furthermore, the consequent application of this meta-model can lead to the discovery of common negotiation patterns, eventually resulting in a reference model for electronic negotiations.