Cross-cultural time sensitivity in a bilateral e-negotiation system

Abstract

For a long time, culture has been an influencing parameter in negotiations. Growth of international trades and business competitions has increased the importance of negotiations among countries and different cultures. Developing new technologies, particularly the use of artificial intelligence in electronic trading areas, has provided us with the application of intelligent agents to resolve challenges in e- negotiations. In this study, a model is developed and implemented to arm intelligent agents with time-sensitivity cultural parameter in negotiations in electronic commerce context. The seller's proposals are offered based on the estimated value of the buyers' time-sensitivity in delivering the products. It starts from the highest price which satisfies the buyer's time sensitivity. The simulations are based on the Salacuse's Cultural dataset related to five countries, Finland, Mexico, Turkey, India, and the United States of America. The negotiation algorithms were implemented in Java platform and MySQL database for both cases of with and without cultural differences in time sensitivity. The evaluation shows that the cultural-based model starts the negotiation from an offer close to the buyer's desire. This yields less number of rounds and total negotiation time period. The simulation results also show that the buyer's budget as an economic factor can be effective in the negotiation outcomes in some cases.