Semantic Web Based Formalization of Argumentation Mechanism in E-Commerce Negotiation

International audienceThe argumentation-based negotiation is among the most recent negotiation approaches it is studied in several research works, the majority of these works propose general models. The modeling of argumentation-based negotiation mechanism for a specific domain, such as e-commerce, requires taking into account his specificity with regard to the nature of exchanged information, the various situations of the negotiation parts and advantages and disadvantages of possible decisions. The main issue in the use of the argumentation-based negotiation is the formalization of the negotiation mechanism. This study aims to propose a semantic web based formalization of argumentation mechanism in e-commerce negotiation, the proposed approach is inspired from the theoretical model developed by Toulmin, S., and the force field analysis technique of Lewin, K., in addition it synthesis and improves the general approaches of argumentation. The semantic web based formalization comprises the representation of the arguments elements, the forces conducting taken decisions, as well as the protocol of arguments generation. Semantic web technologies are also employed in the representation of all knowledge which relates to marketplace and its elements (products, buyers, and sellers). The electronic marketplace architecture presented in this work is a multi-agent system, the developed agents (BuyerAgent and SellerAgent) exploit a set of ontologies (MarketOntology, BuyerOntology, SellerOntology, LaptopOntology and ArgumentOntology). Laptops are chosen as a case of study of sold products