This book covers significant recent developments in the field of
Intelligent Meth- ods applied to eCommerce. The Intelligent Methods
considered are mainly Soft Computing Methods that include fuzzy sets,
rough sets, neural networks, evolutionary computations, probabilistic
and evidential reasoning, multivalued logic, and related fields. There
is not doubt about the relevance of eCommerce in our daily environ-
ments and in the work carried out at many research centers throughout
the world. The application of AI to Commerce is growing as fast as the
computers and net- works are being integrated in all business and
commerce aspects. We felt that it was time to sit down and see how was
the impact into that field of low-level AI, i.e. softcomputing. We found
many scattered contributions disseminated in con- ferences, workshops,
journal, books or even technical reports, but nothing like a common
framework that could serve as a basis for further research, comparison
or even prototyping for a direct transfer to the industry. We felt then
the need to set up a reference point, a book like this. We planned this
book as a recompilation of the newest developments of re- searchers who
already made some contribution into the field. The authors were se-
lected based on the originality and quality of their work and its
relevance to the field. Authors came from prestigious universities and
research centers with differ- ent backgrounds.
