Fuzzy agents bargaining at a farmer's market

Abstract

Computational models of the bargaining process at a farmers' market require modeling subjective preferences of the buyers and sellers and their subjective assessments of the produce. The proposed fuzzy agents based model employs a number of fuzzy inference systems modeled as Standard Additive Models that perform the subjective decision making for the agents. Survey results of different vendors and customers at different farmers' markets provide the rule base coded in these fuzzy expert systems. The results show a steady convergence to a bargain weighted towards the greedier of the two players. Repeated simulations with the proposed model of varying buyers, sellers and the produce indicate that fuzzy agents can model bargaining at a farmers' market.