Dutch Flower Auction

The Dutch Flower Auctions are the central hub in the Dutch flower supply chain. Our research focuses on the trading at the clock auction (Dutch auction) where buying and auctioning goods is a high-pressure task. Learning agents as applied in an advanced Decision Support System (DSS) could allow for the empowerment of all actors in the network, i.e. sellers, auctioneer, and buyers. The central question is how these intelligent agents can be designed and utilized in clock trade at the Dutch Flower Auctions in order to enable better business decisions by the parties involved. The goal of applying learning agents to this context is the improvement of human decision making (sellers, auctioneer, and buyers) and increase allocative efficiency (best fit between buyers and sellers) which results in system-wide economic gains by increasing revenues for all of the parties involved in the trading process.