Patent ID: 7302429
Filing Date: 2007-11-27
Classification: G06Q,Y10S

Abstract:
1. In an online comparison system, a method of ranking merchants, comprising: entering by a consumer a set of weighting factors prior to receiving query information related to a potential consumer purchase, the weighting factors corresponding to categories of merchant comparison information data; receiving the query information related to the potential consumer purchase; receiving a plurality of merchant comparison information data for a plurality of merchants related to completing the potential consumer purchase, the merchant comparison information data for a merchant organized into a plurality of categories, wherein the merchant comparison information data includes non-opinion data from at least two categories from price category, product availability category, product inventory category, time to deliver product category, payment terms category, payment method category, merchant creditworthiness category, and inventory category information; calculating a plurality of respective merchant data weight resultant values for each merchant of the plurality of merchants by multiplying each weighting factor from the entered set of weighting factors by a data value of the merchant comparison information data from a corresponding merchant data category; calculating an aggregate score for each merchant by summing the plurality of calculated merchant data weight resultant values; ranking the merchants based on the aggregate scores to produce a ranking result; and returning the ranking result to the consumer, the ranking result corresponding to the received query information.