Patent ID: 6401074
Filing Date: 2002-06-04
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
A method for augmenting a point of sale system to provide multi-media promotional and informational displays to a customer during a retail transaction that are based on the context of the retail transaction, the method comprising:augmenting a front-end point of sale system to include a multi-media display device for displaying promotional and informational displays to the customer; including a messenger component within the front-end point of sale system to receive real-time notification of events detected by the front-end point of sale system during the course of a retail transaction, translate the events into messages, and make the messages available for processing by other components the point of sale system passing said events to the messenger component by passing the name of said events and data elements associated with said events and the messenger component transforming said events name and data elements according to a transformation map and packaging the transformed said events name and data elements into a self-describing data encapsulation object, including a generator component within the point of sale system to process messages made available by the messenger component to produce descriptions of visual displays corresponding to the promotional and informational displays; including a display component within the point of sale system that receives the descriptions of visual displays produced by the generator component and displays to the customer the corresponding promotional and informational displays on the multi-media display device; and during the course of the retail transaction, receiving notifications of events detected by the front-end point of sale system; translating the events into messages; producing descriptions of visual displays corresponding to the messages; and displaying promotional and informational multi-media displays to the customer on the multi-media display device according to the descriptions of visual displays corresponding to messages representing the translation of events detected by the front-end point of sale system.