Category Archives: Smart Commerce & Factory

Lee, S. K., Lee, J. K. K. J. Lee, “Customized Purchase Supporting Expert System: UNIK-SES”, Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 11, no. 4, pp.431-441, 1996.pdf

Abstract

An expert system that assists the customized men’s wear purchasing process is developed. In the past, configuration systems have adopted either a rule- or a constraint-based representation. To overcome the limitation of the representation, an integrated representation of the Constraint and Rule Satisfaction Problems (CRSP) is adopted. Since the general purpose tool UNIK-CRSP provides concurrent, integrated and interactive reasoning, UNIK-CRSP is very suitable for assisting the personalized customer product configuration process in a natural manner. Using UNIK-CRSP, the domain-specific tool UNIK-SES is developed with the additional features of candidate products selection and user interfaces. This approach should be useful for customer support in electronic marketing on the information superhighway.

Lee, K. J., Chang, Y. S., Lee, J. K., “Time-Bounded Negotiation Framework for Electronic Commerce Agents”, Decision Support Systems, vol. 28, no.4, pp. 319-331, June, 2000.pdf

Abstract

For efficient and informative coordination of agents especially in electronic commerce environment, a time-bound agent negotiation framework is proposed utilizing a time-based commitment scheme. By attaching commitment duration to agent messages, the traditional contract net protocol is extended to a time-bound negotiation framework TBNF. The proposed negotiation framework has a new message type which allows for parties to agree upon the extension of commitment duration, and a novel commitment concept in the form of negative commitment. The semantics of the messages with the commitment duration are interpreted, and then the three typical negotiation protocols are formally defined and compared — nothing-guaranteed protocol, acceptance-guaranteed protocol, and finite-time guarantee protocol — which can be incorporated into TBNF. The TBNF should provide a background for efficient and effective electronic commerce negotiation while accommodating each agent’s adaptive negotiation strategy.

Key Word

Communication protocols; Multi-agent negotiation; Electronic commerce; Contract Net Protocol; Multi-agent coordination

Jin, D. Lee, K, “Impacts and Limitations of Intelligent Agents to Internet Commerce,” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2105, pp. 33-48, July, 2001.pdf

Abstract

Agent-based economy or agent-based electronic commerce is the term for describing one of possible next steps of electronic commerce. The systematic understanding of the agent-based economy is important for researchers to develop practical intelligent agent systems, and for current electronic commerce industries to cope with the challenges of the intelligent agents. With these purposes, we conduct a comprehensive review of ongoing and future impacts of intelligent agents to electronic commerce from business model perspective. We classify intelligent agents by their functions and roles in electronic commerce and analyze the business model change by intelligent agents, based on Timmers’s definition of business model. Changes in architecture of flows, responses of players, influences to revenue model and participant’s benefits, and funding source are discussed with real world business examples and related researches. We also discuss the limitations of intelligent agents in electronic commerce.