Agent-driven online business in virtual communities

As virtual communities and electronic commerce are merging into each other, following users´ wishes and companies´ needs, electronic commerce is, at the same time, starting to support the whole purchasing process, with agent technology adding efficiency and flexibility. We discuss the integration of a multi-agent market framework (CASBA) in a virtual community (VR-SHOP), which uses 3D graphical representations of the participants (avatars) to raise user acceptance and usability by providing a more natural interaction with the medium of interest. As an agent-driven online marketplace, the CASBA system provides an open, automated and flexible platform for electronic commerce. It supports parallel negotiations, following user-specified utility functions and rule-based strategies, and various kinds of auctions.