Merchant differentiation through integrative negotiation in agent-mediated electronic commerce

This thesis proposes to fix online shopping by guiding it away from price comparisons and toward value comparisons. Though price comparisons may be adequate for simple products (e.g., books and music), they are inadequate for facilitating transactions of complex products (e.g., computers and automobiles). Consumers often must consider qualities other than price in their buying decisions and merchants usually prefer to differentiate themselves along alternative dimensions such as brand, customer service, delivery time, warranty, and other value-added services. Tete-a-Tete is an agent-mediated comparison shopping system that allows consumers to consider dimensions other than price in their buying decisions for complex products. The system helps shoppers answer two questions: what to buy and who to buy from. Tete-a- Tete's integrative negotiation interaction model (based on bilateral argumentation), together with a decision support module (based on multi-attribute utility theory), create an improved online shopping environment for both consumers and merchants. Consumers gain increased satisfaction as their search costs for complex products are reduced and merchants potentially increase sales as a result of their enhanced differentiation in the marketplace.

Department dc:contributor.department

Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Guttman, Robert H., 1969-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pattie Maes.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9738

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9738