Modeling the rational behavior of buyers and sellers in an E-commerce system using agent-based simulation

In today’s world, the popularity of E-commerce and online transactions has increased dramatically. Such transactions are done indirectly with the help of an intermediary or a third party. A review of the literature shows that reputation plays an important role in reducing buyer’s risk in such situations. An online reputation management system is a system that is formed from the positive or negative beliefs or opinions of people about a person, product or service and can guarantee the reliability of transactions in the E-commerce systems. In these systems, shipping services and transportation costs are also among the items that can influence the buyer’s decision, because like the traditional way, the buyer does not buy the product from the store or in person, and factors such as the distance between buyer and seller might impact the shipping cost or even buyer’s trust. Buyer-seller interaction is a traditional field of application of game theory. In this research, the combined approach of agent-based simulation and game theory is used to evaluate an E-commerce system, in which a centralized reputation management system is provided by a trusted third party. Then, a numerical evaluation is performed to evaluate the proposed model, in which the impact of the policies of a group of buyers and sellers and their behavior in the E-commerce system is modeled.