@proceedings {Crowston:1996,
	title = {Market-enabling Internet agents},
	year = {1996},
	address = {Columbus, OH, December},
	abstract = {The growth of the Internet offers a vision of ubiquitous electronic commerce. A particularly exciting feature of Internet commerce is the ability to automate the search for price or other product information across multiple suppliers by using an {\textquotedblleft}agent{\textquotedblright} to retrieve the relevant information. The use of such agents has the potential to dramatically reduce buyers{\textquoteright} search costs. We argue that such agents effectively transform a diverse set of offerings into an economically efficient market and that their use should therefore be analyzed in these terms.
In this paper, we present a simple model of the competitive effects of agents used to support purchasing. The model suggests that agents can be successful for diversified goods but resisted for commodities and near-commodities. We illustrate our model by analyzing the situation of current electronic commerce ventures on the Internet. },
	keywords = {Internet Agent},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/icis96.pdf},
	author = {Kevin Crowston},
	editor = {DeGross, Janice I. and Jarvenpaa, Sirkka and Srinivasan, Ananth}
}
