Business-Driven Negotiation Strategies for Proactive Embodied Conversational Agents in E-Commerce

TLDR: In this article, the authors adopt a sell-based approach for online customer service, so that the conversational agent is proactive since he initiates an offer without waiting for assistance requests.

Abstract: A considerable number of the research conducted in the area of Software Agents focus on the enhancement and the proper provision of online Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs). However, the ability of these agents to transform an ordinary visitor of an e-commerce who needs assistance to an actual buyer is yet of no notable weight. In this paper, we adopt a sell-based approach for online customer service, so that the conversational agent is proactive since he initiates an offer without waiting for assistance requests.We introduce new negotiation strategies for embodied conversational agents which reflect real-life sales approaches, such as bundling two or more items into one deal, or providing a promotion on a certain item for a certain time, or the commonly used value-added sales.