Automated negotiation through a cooperative-competitive model

Automated negotiation has become increasingly important and pervasive since the advent of e-Business. It frees people from tedious interactions, improves the efficiency of e-business and ensures the accuracy of complex service composition. However, there are limitations of the existing negotiation models. Firstly, the majority of existing negotiation models are "price" bargain type of negotiation. It does not consider the reasons lead to the bargain position. Secondly, a few interest based negotiation models proposed in recent years are able to consider the underlying reasons of the counter party's position, therefore, have more chance to reach an agreement. However, they focus on individual's alternative solution seeking. None of these models promote the most productive human negotiation approach, especially in the global economic context, to constructively cooperate and seek for possible win-win situations. In an e-business environment, it would be more powerful if new services could be built on multiple parties' existing services to form a cooperative solution. This paper proposes a negotiation model to enable negotiation parties to exchange preferences and knowledge, develop optimal cooperative solutions for mutual benefits. It is a cooperative-competitive win-win strategy.