Studying retailer strategies through an integrated e-business model: a multi-agent approach

Agent technology has been widely applied in today's electronic business, such as mobile agents, multi-agent information systems, etc. In particular, multi-agent systems have been applied as powerful simulation tools to study complex business networks composed of various self-interested trading firms and/or human beings. In this paper, we build an integrated model that consists of a multi-agent B2C market model and a B2B trade network model, and incorporate more reality than much of prior work. Then with this model, we carry out experimental studies on two different strategies that are common in electronic business – ‘loyal’ strategy (retailers try to build stable cooperation with suppliers to ensure material supply) and ‘cost-saving’ strategy (retailers try to reduce cost by choosing suppliers with lower wholesale price).