Among the many changes brought by the Internet is the emergence of electronic commerce over the Web. E-commerce activities, such as the online exchange of information, services, and products, are opening up completely new opportunities for business, at new levels of productivity and profitability. In parallel with the emergence of e-commerce, intelligent software agents as entities capable of independent action in open, unpredictable environments have matured into a promising new technology. Quite naturally, e-commerce agents hold great promise for exploiting the Internet's full potential as an electronic marketplace. The 20 coherently written chapters in this book by leading researchers and professionals present the state of the art in agent-mediated e-commerce. Researchers, professionals, and advanced students interested in e-commerce or agent technology will find this book an indispensable source of information and reference.

Among the many changes brought by the Internet is the emergence of electronic commerce over the Web. E-commerce activities, such as the online exchange of information, services, and products, are opening up completely new opportunities for business, at new levels of productivity and profitability. In parallel with the emergence of e-commerce, intelligent software agents as entities capable of independent action in open, unpredictable environments have matured into a promising new technology. Quite naturally, e-commerce agents hold great promise for exploiting the Internet's full potential as an electronic marketplace. The 20 coherently written chapters in this book by leading researchers and professionals present the state of the art in agent-mediated e-commerce. Researchers, professionals, and advanced students interested in e-commerce or agent technology will find this book an indispensable source of information and reference.

"This research book is a repository for academicians, researchers, and industry practitioners to share and exchange their research ideas, theories, and practical experiences, discuss challenges and opportunities, and present tools and techniques in all aspects of e-business development and management in the digital economy"--Provided by publisher.

The Internet is spawning many new markets and electronic commerce is changing many market conventions. Not only are old commercial practices being adapted to the new conditions of immediacy brought forth by the global networks, but new products and services, as well as new practices, are beginning to appear. There is already ample evidence that agent-based technologies will be crucial for these - velopments. However many theoretical, technological, sociological, and legal - pects will need to be addressed before such opportunities become a significant reality. In addition to streamlining traditional transactions, agents enable new types of transactions. For example, the elusive one-to-one marketing becomes more of a - ality when consumer agents capture and share (or sell) consumer demographics. Prices and other transaction dimensions need no longer to be fixed; selling agents can dynamically tailor merchant offerings to each consumer. Economies of scale become feasible in new markets when agents negotiate on special arbitration c- tracts. Dynamic business relationships will give rise to more competitively agile organizations. It is these new opportunities combined with substantial reduction in transaction costs that will revolutionize electronic commerce.

This book documents the efforts undertaken by the EG AgentLink Special Interest Group on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce, SIG AMEC. First and foremost, the book presents a roadmap of research and current technological development in the area of agent mediated electronic commerce. A particularly interesting part of this roadmap is the joint perspective on future developments. The book also contains a number of papers that fill in parts of this roadmap in a European context. Some of the papers present significant current R&D results while other papers indicate some clear directions for future research. The book is structured in topical sections on negotiation, markets, user preferences, and security.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC 2002, held in Bologna, Italy in July 2002 during the AAMAS 2002 conference. The 20 revised full papers presented together with an introductory survey by the volume editors were carefully selected and improved during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The book gives a unique overview of the state of the art of designing mechanisms and systems for agent-mediated e-commerce- The papers are organized in topical sections on electronic auctions, negotiations, and electronic markets.

This book constitutes the joint refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop on Theory Building and Formal Methods in Electronic/Mobile Commerce, TheFormEMC, the first European Performance Engineering Workshop, EPEW, and the First International Workshop on Integration of Testing Methodologies, ITM, held jointly in association with FORTE 2004 in Toledo, Spain in October 2004. The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 62 submissions. The papers are grouped in three topical sections corresponding to the workshop topics.