A Markov-Decision-Based Price Comparison Problem for Mobile AGent-based Internet Commerce System (MAGICS)

Authors:
Perry P. Y. Lam;Henry C. B. Chan
Affiliations:
Hong Kong Polytechnic University;Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Venue:
CEC '04 Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology
Year:
2004

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Agent-based algorithms for collaborative price search in electronic commerce: a case study and performance evaluation

Intelligent Decision Technologies

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Abstract

Mobile agents are well suited for facilitating the consumer buying process on the Internet, particularly for comparing prices. In this paper, we present a mobile agent-based e-commerce system, called MAGICS, that addresses some issues concerning price comparisons. After providing an overview of the MAGICS architecture, we use the Markov decision theory to formulate a price comparison problem. The objective of the problem is to obtain an optimal decision policy in order to buy a product at the lowest expected cost, including the traveling costs. The problem was solved using the backward induction algorithm. Some analytical results are presented and discussed.