Coalition problems in e-markets attract attention from the research communities and industry. This research focuses on e-trading models relating to online coalitions. A new Core Broking Model (CBM), for online group-trading is presented. This aims not only to bring lower prices for buyers but also to create higher profits for providers. The survey of current online shopping sites in this thesis shows that it is almost impossible to find a site designed specifically for group-trading, although there are plenty of joint-selling activities and also many online group-buying sites. The former increases competitive advantages and benefits providers. However it allows cartels to take control of price and to disadvantage customers. Recently, the latter have become very popular. The major problem of these models is that they lack the ability to deal with the stability issue in coalitions, which therefore fall apart easily. The core, a concept from economics, provides solutions to ensure a stable coalition (Gillies 1953), but its certain problems have hindered researchers from applying it to a real-world market. Building an online group-trading model is essential. Developing such a new model for e-markets can be a real challenge. Three factors, namely (a) incentive compatibility, (b) distributed computing, and (c) less computational complexity, all have to be considered at the same time. The new model is based on the core and adopts some other solution concepts to resolve group-trading problems in e-markets. It involves bundle selling of multiple goods from several providers, offering volume discounts to many different buyers in group-buying on e-marketplaces. The CBM successfully creates a win-win-win situation for customers, providers and brokers in e-markets. The comparison between the results of the new model and the core shows the CBM is superior to the core in terms of the three factors mentioned above. The results of the simulation presented in this thesis demonstrate that the CBM can attract customers and deal with online group-trading problems in a large coalition. An extensive evaluation of the techniques in the CBM has been made and shows that all of them produced the desired results in the CBM effectively and efficiently.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:628930 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Sun, P.-C. |
| Publisher | Coventry University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/7e2581d6-c089-47ed-baff-dc819e7fdd13/1 |
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