FACILITATING ELECTRONIC COMMERCE THROUGH AUTOMATED DATA-BASED REPUTATION CHRACTERIZATION

The present invention addresses the problem of using reputation to establish trust between strangers in a person-to-person transaction in an electronic commerce system without the drawbacks of subjective reputation feedback systems. The present invention generates objective feedback for transaction participants by monitoring their actual behavior at a variety of well-defined points in the transaction, such as payment and shipping. An objective reputation characterization system for use in a person-to-person electronic commerce system is disclosed. The system includes a data capture component to receive a first notification of a deadline relating to a transaction event and to receive a second notification of the transaction event occurring corresponding to the deadline, and an analysis component to build an objective reputation profile of a transaction participant based at least in part on the notifications.