Communication Design for Electronic Negotiations on the Basis of XML Schema

Support for negotiations in electronic markets is one of the primary issues in today’s e-commerce research. Only few activities, however, are focused on the design issues of electronic negotiation scenarios -- e.g. the protocol to choose, obligations and responsibilities of the negotiating parties etc. However, an explicit negotiation design can also address what is commonly referred to as the ontology problem of electronic negotiations: how can be ensured, that the negotiating parties have the same understanding regarding the issues that are subject to the negotiation?
The solution this paper proposes is to perform a communication design for electronic negotiations, which explicitly specifies the common syntax and semantics, the logical space, of the negotiating parties. Furthermore, XML Schema is suggested as mechanism for the runtime representation of the logical space and the validation of actual negotiations from a syntactical and semantical perspective. On the basis of this approach organisations creating an electronic market or sellers intending to offer their buyers the possibility to bargain, can design and generate support mechanisms for electronic negotiations in a flexible and efficient way.
The communication design meta-model presented is part of SilkRoad, a design and application framework for electronic negotiations.
Keywords: Stroebel