Abstract: An electronic exchange creates and distributes value among trading partners in a trade. Trading agents for the trading partners use a value manager to store true values for a trading element in the trade. The true values are the values perceived by the trading partner, but are not shown to other trading partners. These true values vary with attributes of the trading element. The attributes modify the trading element and are valued differently by different trading partners. A trade manager receives offers from trading agents. The offers are sent with the true values and the attribute values. The trade manager compares true values of buyers and sellers across a range of attribute values. Net values are computed as the difference of a buyers' sum and a sellers' sum. The buyers' sum is the sum of all true values from buyer trading agents, while the sellers' sum is the sum of the true values of all seller trading agents. The trade manager finds a set of attribute values that has a maximum net value.

Abstract: A multi-attribute trading system creates value for both the buyer and seller. A spread or net value between the buyer's true value and the seller's true value is divided among the buyer, seller, and trading system. Multiple true values are inputted by a buyer for products with varied attribute specifications such as travel services. These multiple values are stored in a buyer attribute tree. Likewise, the seller specifies multiple true values for a multi-attribute product that are stored in a seller attribute tree. The trading system compares the buyer attribute tree to the seller attribute tree. For each specification of the multiple attributes, the spread or difference between the buyer-specified true value and the seller-specified true value is calculated. The attribute specification producing the maximum of these spreads is selected for trading.