Buyer-supplier negotiation by fuzzy logic based agents

Automated negotiation between buyers and suppliers has become increasingly important since the advent of the e-marketplace. In this study, automated negotiation by software agents is investigated. The negotiation tactics of an agent are formulated based on the concept of issue trade-offs and are presented as fuzzy rules. A simple heuristic is employed to learn the opponent´s preference structure in the negotiation process. Initial experimental results are provided.