Coping with one-to-many multi-criteria negotiations in electronic markets

We are concerned with negotiators who negotiate on issues (products or services) characterized in terms of multiple criteria. In a typical round of the negotiation, the negotiator receives from various counter-parties responses or offers with specific values on the criteria that characterize the issue at stake. Clearly, the negotiator has certain preferences with respect to these offers. The analyis we present here allows us to reveal the dependencies among the various offers in light of the negotiator's preferences. In addition, we are able to expose the dependencies among the criteria, as they are implied by the counter-parties' offers. We make use of basic concepts from preference modeling and relational analysis to obtain a family of partial rank orders illustrating the dependencies among offers and criteria. We believe that, by using this information, the negotiator is better armed to identify the most suitable counter-party to negotiate with, or the criterion on which to focus in this negotiation.