arXiv AI By Charin Polpanumas

Vendster: An Evaluation Arena to Investigate How Forecasting Tool Quality Affects LLM Agent Behaviors in Buyer-Vendor Negotiation

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Vendster is an evaluation arena that studies how the bias and prediction‑interval width of time‑series forecasters influence the outcomes of buyer‑vendor discount negotiations conducted by large language model (LLM) agents. In its reference instance, Vendster‑M5, forecasts generated by LLMs increased sales target attainment by up to 17 percentage points, yet traditional forecast accuracy metrics did not predict negotiation success. Controlled experiments revealed that under‑prediction bias significantly improves outcomes for agents that react strongly to forecasts, while interval width has no notable effect when bias is zero.

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