Intelligent Software Agents for Electronic Commerce

Abstract

Electronic commerce (EC) and software agents are two of the hottest fields of research in information science. As the Internet is rapidly becomes a popular marketplace for consumers and sellers of goods and services, combining these two research areas offers lucrative opportunities both for businesses wishing to conduct transactions over the World Wide Web (WWW) and for developers of tools to facilitate this trend. The focus in this chapter will be on software agents specifically designed for electronic commerce activities. We will briefly describe the history of agent research in general, defining characteristics of agents, and will touch on the different types of agents. Following this introduction we will describe the learning and action mechanisms that make it possible for agents to perform tasks. Finally, we will describe the issues associated with the deployment of electronic commerce agents (ECAs).