Pre-Negotiations Over Services - A Framework for Evaluation

A framework for evaluation and selection of service offers during the pre-negotiation phase in automated negotiations over services is proposed. The pre-negotiation problem for a buyer of services is regarded as essentially a decision making problem, related to a set of possible scenarios, involving a number of pre-negotiation choices - identifying suitable service offers, establishing a common criteria scheme, evaluating the offers and choosing the best alternatives to proceed negotiations on. The concept of Alternative Focused Thinking (AFT) during pre-negotiations is introduced. Since the comparison of service packages involves multiple criteria, it is argued that it may be beneficial to use an integrated approach for evaluation, involving different weighting methods. The use of multiple criteria decision aid software in supporting the pre-negotiation interactions is illustrated through a HIPRE model, involving three weighting techniques - the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) and a simple weighting function. The application of hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods in pre-negotiations is proposed as a direction for future research.