Agent-driven online business in virtual communities

As virtual communities and electronic commerce are merging into each other, following users' wishes and companies' needs, electronic commerce is, at the same time, starting to support the whole purchasing process, with agent technology adding efficiency and flexibility. We discuss the integration of a multi-agent market framework (CASBA) in a virtual community (VR-SHOP), which uses 3D graphical representations of the participants (avatars) to raise user acceptance and usability by providing a more natural interaction with the medium of interest. As an agent-driven online marketplace, the CASBA system provides an open, automated and flexible platform for electronic commerce. It supports parallel negotiations, following user-specified utility functions and rule-based strategies, and various kinds of auctions.