Agent-Based E-Commerce and its Contribution to Economy

Today the importance of e-commerce increases in line with the rise in the number of internet users. The complexity and the excess of information in internet make the use of semantic web in e-commerce mandatory. In practice, semantic web uses agents for economic income. Agents are integrated into e-commerce systems such as B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2B (Business to Business). So, agents enable the exchange between customers and sellers and allow shopping transaction. Multi-agent systems are generally used in agent-based e-commerce systems. Negotiation and auction gained importance in these multi-agent systems. There are some differences between B2B and B2C agent systems. These differences can be exemplified by some systems such as MIT’s KASBAH or E-bay’s AuctionBot. With these systems, buyers can purchase with the minimum prices and sellers can reach more costumers without advertisement. In this paper, the benefits and challenges of agent based e-commerce is investigated and the contribution of the use of agents in B2B (Business to Business) e-commerce systems to the economy is examined.