Agent - based simulation for Mro e-commerce

Abstract

An e-commerce company (Fact-depot) is struggling to generate profit since there are so many uncertainties from demands of customers and variable unit costs from suppliers. This thesis studies many different pricing strategies in e-commerce and applied Multi-agent simulation to study their profitability in various scenarios that Fact-depot is facing. This model is built on three main agents: Supplier, Retailer and Customer. Two sub-agents of Customers as: Loyalty, and Distance are utilized to divide customer segments. Based on simulation results from Goldsim, the most appropriate pricing strategy was suggested. Keywords: Agent-based, Simulation, E-commerce, Pricing strategies, MRO