Do you Haggle?
A Filipina acquaintance was traveling with her husband around Canada. They arrived late one night at Niagara Falls, needing a hotel room. They went in to the nearest hotel and asked for a room. “That’ll be $140”, said the hotelier. Being a Filipina, and used to haggling, she didn’t just accept this, and managed to bargain him down to $70. “I’d have paid $100” she said, when the deal was done. “I’d have taken $20”, replied the hotelier.
HaggleAgents automate both sides of this process. Rather than spending an hour in a coffee shop with a laptop searching, filtering and evaluating hotel room information to get the best deal, imagine employing a HaggleAgent to do it for you in 60 seconds, while you park the car!
HaggleAgents use proprietary Intelligent Software Agent Technologies to negotiate in a networked environment. Intelligent Software Agents are autonomous software systems which act intelligently on the user’s behalf. In a HaggleAgent enabled e-commerce platform, agents act as principals for both the consumers and the merchants in the electronic marketplace.
There are many potential applications of HaggleAgents, in many different marketplaces (particularly, but not exclusively in cases where there is some element of ‘delinquency’ in the product or service being offered):
Travel
- Hotel Rooms
- Taxis
- Car Hire
- City Centre Car parking spaces
Empty hotel rooms, airport taxis, hire cars and car parking spaces all cost the merchant money.
Healthcare
Need to see a dentist or a doctor? Unfilled appointments might cost healthcare professionals £100s in foregone income.
How much will they be willing to accept to fill the appointment?
Haulage - Freight “Backhauling”
Got an empty goods vehicle on the road? How far out of its way are you willing to send it to pick up some freight on its way back. How long are you willing to wait to get your package delivered?
Courier Services
Retail
I’m in the city and I want the latest Amy Winehouse CD. Now! How far am I willing to walk to get it cheaper than on the highstreet? Up to half a mile, but only if there’s a coffee shop nearby. Any 2-for-1 deals out there?
These are just some potential applications of the HaggleAgents platform. This revolutionary platform can facilitate and support any kind of offer, acceptance and ultimately a sales process where there is intrinsic value to a negotiation process within the supplier, buyer or re-seller marketplace.
The final outcome of a haggle transaction is an exact price negotiated using intelligent software agents to emulate a human negotiation process, however complex this would need to be. Parameters around demand-levels, discount-levels, reserve prices, time-to-expiry and location have been successfully engineered and demonstrated. The system can even accommodate level-of-persistence thresholds which for example, bar a consecutive request from a known user – ensuring integrity of the platform is maintained.
For details of types of Haggle Merchants, see Business Cases
Isn’t this just like a bidding war, like in an auction?
No – in an online auction, many consumers effectively compete with each other to give as much money as possible to a single merchant. In a HaggleAgents scenario, many merchants compete with one another to take as little money as possible from a single consumer (though they might also charge premium prices in response to high demand!). Auctions are also only ever based on price. When looking for a hotel room, for example, hotel features such as location, and additional services (laundry, internet access, spa) might be as important as price. HaggleAgents can take account of these additional factors.