Use Of Intelligent Agents In Ecommerce

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

Software agents can be defined as semi-autonomous software entities which support individuals cope with the complexities when working in a distributed information environment. Recently, with the rapid development of Artificial Intelligent these intelligent agents have been applied to various e-commerce transactions, encouraging a revolution in the way people conduct transactions in e-commerce. This paper describes how these intelligent agents involved in e-commerce transactions and what are the benefits and limitations of using intelligent agents in e-commerce transactions.

1. Introduction

In recent years the World Wide Web has become largest market place due to its exponential growth enabled extensive progress in new information society functions such as electronic commerce. Electronic commerce, known as e-commerce, is a type of business where buying and selling of product or service over electronic methods such as the Internet and other computer related networks.[1] Electronic commerce encompasses business to business (B2B), business to customer (B2C) and customer to customer (C2C) transactions. It covers a wide variety of issues including security, trust, reputation, law, payment mechanisms, advertising, ontologies, electronic product catalogs, intermediaries, multimedia shopping experiences, and back office management. Agent technologies can be applied to any of these areas in e- commerce.[2]

Software agents were first used few years ago to filter information, match individuals with similar interests, and automate repetitive activities. More lately, agents have been applied to e-commerce, encouraging a revolution in the way people conduct transactions in e-commerce. Intelligent agents in e-commerce web sites can carry out many decision making and problem-solving tasks that usually require human intelligence, such as diagnosis, data sorting, planning, or negotiation. They can answer email messages, search the Internet for valuable information, carry out comparisons, or even become electronic pets.

2. Intelligent Agents

According to IDMs definition intelligent agents are software programs that carry out some set of tasks on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence. So doing, gain some knowledge or representation of the user's desires. According to Meas definition software agents are computer programs that run in the background and perform tasks autonomously.

Software agents are becoming an important part of these Modern information systems because they diminish the complexity, and they achieve this technically and psychologically. Technically, each agent provides a locus of intelligence for managing a subset of the information in the system, either on its own initiative or under the direction of a user. Each intelligent agent can be readily replicated and then distributed as needed. This agent-based approach to information management is both scalable and cost-effective.

Psychologically, people need abstractions by which they can understand, manage, and use complex systems effectively. A natural and convenient abstraction appears to be one based on humanizing the information system components that is, treating the components as animate. In this abstraction, software components are like human agents. The abstraction is effective, because people have a lot of experience in dealing with other people, and they can apply their experience to understanding and dealing with complex software. [3]

O. Etzioni and D.S. Weld [5] defined a software agent as a software entity which functions continuously and independently in a specific environment often occupied by other agents and processes. The requirement for endurance and independence derives from human desire that an agent should be able to do activities in a flexible and intelligent manner reactive to changes in the environment without constant human observation. An agent that functions over a long period of time should be able to implement from its experience. Also, an agent should be able to occupy an environment with other agents and processes, and to be able to communicate and collaborate with them.

2.1 Types of Software Agents

Hendler [4] distinguishes four types of agents by function.

Problem-solving agents -They do many traditional planning expert systems did, namely collect data, analyze a situation, and make a conforming decision for how to act on the user’s behalf. Purchasing agents is an example for this category.

User-centric agents- These type of agents enable interaction with the user. Also they provide a better user interface by getting knowledge about the user’s system use preferences and tailoring the interface to the user preferences.

Control agents – They control the operation of some agents in a multi agent environment. In this context one needs to remember that agents are not only mobile, but also small in size, each with a very specialized capability. Hence, the interaction of several agents might be required to provide sufficient intelligence and capability. These are very progressive agents used in research experimentations.

Transaction agents- These agents translate information between different data standards within a unrelated database or file environment.

Between these four types, the ones that create contention are problem solving agents specializing in data gathering. They may be aided by transaction agents to access data from numerous data sources and may be controlled by control agents. However, the most important functionality is the ability to collect and analyze information from remote sites.

2.1.1 Characteristics of Software Agents

Dependable with the requirements of a specific problem, each intelligent agent might possess to a greater or lesser degree the attributes stating below [5, 6, and 7]

Reactivity: the capability of selectively sense and act.

Autonomy: goal-directedness, and self-starting behavior.

Collaborative behavior: can work in collaboration with other agent to attain a mutual goal.

"Knowledge-level" communication capability: their ability to communicate with human and other agents with language more approaching human-like speech than symbol-level protocols.

Inferential capability: can perform on abstract task specification using previous knowledge of general goals and chosen methods to achieve flexibility.

Temporal continuity: persistence of uniqueness and state over long time periods.

Personality: the ability of exhibiting the attributes of a believable character such as emotion.

Adaptively: being able to learn and progress with experience.

Mobility: ability to transfer in a self-directed way from one host platform to another.

3. Intelligent Agents in e-Commerce

Artificial intelligence (AI) started to play a important role in many leading information systems. In the past, its use of AI has been limited due to its complexity, huge designs and lack of expertise in system developers. AI involvement is now essential in nondeterministic systems such as workflow, data mining, production planning, supply chain logistics, and most lately, e-commerce.

Intelligent agent technology is the next logical step in overcoming some shortcomings in e-commerce. Namely, successful computer systems underlying e-commerce require judgment and the knowledge of experts such as buyers, contract negotiators and marketing specialists [8]

Also e-commerce covers a broad range of issues; some of them are away from the scope of consumer buying behavior model. There are a variation of theories and models that describes buying behavior, such as the Nicosia model, the Howard- Sheth model, the Engel-Blackwell model, the Bettman information-processing model, and the Andreasen model [9].Acoording to Aleksander Pivk and Matjaž Gams these models all have a comparable list of six fundamental stages of the buying process, which also relevent where agent technologies apply to the shopping experience[8]

Identification: In that stage characterizes the buyer becoming aware of particular unmet need by inspiring through product information. Agents can play an significant role for those purchases that are repetitive (supplies) or predictable (habits). One of the oldest and simplest There are many examples in abundant use, one very aware of is a "notification agent" called "Eyes" by Amazon.com, which observers the catalog of books for sale and notifies the customer when certain events occur that may be of interest to the customer

Brokering: There are two types of brokering namely product brokering and merchant brokering. In product brokering once a buyer has recognized a requirement to make a purchase the buyer has to determine what to buy through a critical evaluation of retrieved product information. There are several agents systems that lower consumers search cost when deciding which products best meets their needs. The result of this stage is a get attention to set of goods. In merchant brokering stage combines the consideration set from the previous stage with merchant-specific alternatives to help determine who to buy from.

Negotiation: in this stage of buying behavior, price and other terms of the transaction are settled between merchants and buyers. Real-world scenarios negotiation increases transaction costs that may be too high for either consumers or merchants.. The most of business-to-business(B2B) transactions contain negotiation.

Payment and Delivery: this stage can either indicate the end of the negotiation stage or cause to place another order. In some cases, the presented payment or delivery options can affect product and merchant brokering.

Product Service and Evaluation: this post- purchase stage contains of product service, customer service, and an evaluation of the satisfaction of thetotal buying experience and decision.

Considering above five stages, It can be recognized the roles of agents as mediators in e-commerce. The nature of agents makes them suitable for mediating those consumer behaviors involving information filtering and retrieval, personalized evaluations, complex coordination, and time-based interactions. Those roles correspond most especially to the need identification, product and merchant brokering, and negotiation stages of the buying behavior model.

4. Limitations of Intelligent Agents

A major limitation intelligent agent technology using most e-commerce activities is that agents can pose a security risk to remote hosts as well as their original host). A broad discussion of these risks and possible countermeasures is provided to International Journal of Electronic Commerce by T. Mandry ,G.Pernul and A. Röhm the following possible risks were identified.[9]

Stealing data and Illegal access - Web agents may try to get access to databases they are not permitted to access or for which there is an access charge.

Free use of resources - Agents always tries to "steal" resources from remote hosts. As long as this is in line with accepted protocols, it is an acceptable practice. However, if agents cover-up as alternate processes, they may use insupportable levels of resource.

Unauthorized program execution - This also known as Trojan horse. Agents can be masquerade and then execute programs that are eventually harmful to the remote hosts. Such Trojan horses attacks have now been used frequently on the Internet..

Data stripping or alteration (by server). Technically it is possible to strip Web agents of their data. This is mostly a concern for a site that sends out agents to remote hosts, but also it could potentially affect other sites. For instance, suppose Buyer has a trusted relationship with both Seller 1 and Seller 2. However, there exists a competitive relationship between the two sellers. An intelligent agent that originates from Buyer and travels to Seller 1 and then to Seller 2 could be stripped by Seller 2 to obtain competitive data about Seller 1.

Resource exhaustion resulting in denial-of service -. Web agents can exhaust remote host properties to the point where the remote host can no longer function correctly.

Deceitful agent behavior. - Agents can mislead other agents or hosts about their intent and can lie about transactions.

5. Benefits of intelligent agents in e commerce

Regardless of Intelligent agent’s limitations and risks they are addressed as one of the most attractive technologies for the near future and are considered by many an absolute necessity for e-commerce Therefore, it is valuable to look at some helpful effects of Intelligent web agents related to

Transaction costs - Single benefits of e-commerce is lowered transaction costs. However, in order to attain this goal transaction processing processes essential to be automated. If closing the deal needs any negotiation, or search for information, or related activities, it also requires intelligence, and thus provides a rich application area for Web agents.[2]

Turnaround time - In some e commerce applications, speedy turnaround time is completely essential. Customers want instantaneous order execution, and also expect reply to inquiries in very short time.

Closing the deal – As intelligent agents can significantly increase the effectiveness of e-commerce transactions, they can also progress its efficiency. The ability to close a deal via an agent permits companies to make sales that are otherwise impossible.

Lowest price purchase - Compare prices and shopping over the Internet has turn into the one of the most widely held applications for agent technology. Agents can make the search for the lowermost cost almost easily for the customer. While highly useful for buyers, this change has clearly raised concerns with merchants.

5. Discussion

This paper describes how intelligent software agent can automate and add value to e-commerce transactions and negotiations. By using intelligent agent based e-commerce techniques, businesses can more effectively and efficiently make decisions since they have more accurate and reliable information and recognize consumers’ perceptions and behaviors. Eventually, agents are facilitating very valuable services, equally to customers who may benefit from buying at low costs, and for companies who also lower their search costs. As long as agents do not pose an improper load on remote servers and as long as security problems can be limited, the agents’ great benefits in reducing transaction costs speed up cycle time, and closing the sale will result in their extensive use. However, one class of agents those that harvest free information and reroute it to other sites may change the nature of the e-free business and will face a significantly more unsettled and hazardous future..

Acknowledgement

First I express my deep sense of gratitude and profound feeling of admiration to my supervisor Dr Thilak Chaminda whose supervision and support from the preliminary to the current level enabled me to improve this research work. Lastly, I would like to put forward my sincere thanks to my mother, father, lecturers, my friends and those who supported me in any respect during the completion of this research work.

Finally, yet importantly, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents for their blessings, my friends for their help and wishes for the successful completion of this project.