An Electronic Marketplace Based on Reputation and Learning

In this paper, we propose a market model which is based on reputation and reinforcement learning algorithms for buying and selling agents. Three important factors: quality, price and delivery-time are considered in the model. We take into account the fact that buying agents can have different priorities on quality, price and delivery-time of their goods and selling agents adjust their bids according to buying agents preferences. Also we have assumed that multiple selling agents may offer the same goods with different qualities, prices and delivery-times. In our model, selling agents learn to maximize their expected profits by using reinforcement learning to adjust product quality, price and delivery-time. Also each selling agent models the reputation of buying agents based on their profits for that seller and uses this reputation to consider discount for reputable buying agents. Buying agents learn to model the reputation of selling agents based on different features of goods: reputation on quality, reputation on price and reputation on delivery-time to avoid interaction with disreputable selling agents. The model has been implemented with Aglet and tested in a large-sized marketplace. The results show that selling/buying agents that model the reputation of buying/selling agents obtain more satisfaction rather than selling/buying agents who only use the reinforcement learning.