Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce [electronic resource] : The European AgentLink Perspective /

AMEC: Scientific and Technological Roadmap -- Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce: Scientific and Technological Roadmap -- Negotiation -- A Classification Scheme for Negotiation in Electronic Commerce -- Designing and Testing Negotiation Protocols for Electronic Commerce Applications -- Specifying the Processes and States of Negotiation -- Agents Advanced Features for Negotiation in Electronic Commerce and Virtual Organisations Formation Process -- Markets -- Agents, Markets, Institutions, and Protocols -- A Model for an Electronic Market Place -- On the Formal Specification of Electronic Institutions -- Towards a Flexible Trading Process over the Internet -- Preferences -- Modeling User Preferences and Mediating Agents in Electronic Commerce -- Agent Technologies for the Development of Adaptive Web Stores -- Constraint Satisfaction for Modelling Scalable Electronic Catalogs -- Security -- Encrypting Java Archives and Its Application to Mobile Agent Security.

It is now no longer necessary to argue the importance of agent technology. Be- des numerous conferences and workshops on speci c aspects of agent technology there are also many companies that are exploring its exploitation possibilities. In the light of these developments and in order to foster the transfer of agent technology from research labs to business, the EU has funded a \network of exc- lence" devoted to agent technology. This network of excellence, called AgentLink (http://www. agentlink. org/), aims at bringing together research groups from d- ferent countries and industrial developers. The ultimate goal is to create synergy among the di erent projects and groups to improve the competence of European industry and the excellence of academia. In order to achieve this goal, Agent- Link organises educational activities (summer schools), builds agent-related - terature repositories, and facilitates collaboration between member nodes. One of the main activities related to the last point are the regular meetings of \S- cial Interest Groups" (SIGs). At this moment six SIGs are functioning, focusing on topics ranging from agent based social simulation to intelligent agents for telecommunications applications and telematics. The current book combines two results from the activities of the SIG on \Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce". This SIG gathers the main research groups and industrial partners interested in the use of agent technology in el- tronic commerce. First and foremost the book contains a roadmap of research and current technological developments in the area of agent-mediated electronic commerce.