Abstract:
A paperless merchandise discount coupons acquisition and redemption system is provide by employing the consumer&#39;s cell phone or other wireless device. The consumer registers in the system with the unique IMEI number or Bluetooth(trademark) friendly address, and specifies products interested. The system matches the consumer&#39;s registered information and in response to purchase information of the consumer to provide the discount amount to the retailer from whom the consumer purchases the product.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    1. Field of the Invention 
         [0002]    This invention relates generally to the field of coupon acquisition and redemption by consumers and more particularly to discount coupons acquisition and redemption by consumers by utilizing wireless devices having short range wireless radio near field communication such as Bluetooth(trademark), without employing paper coupons. 
         [0003]    2. Prior Art 
         [0004]    Merchandise discount coupons are distributed by product manufacturers or retailers by printing them in local or national publications, or are mailed directly to potential customers, or are printed on the packaging of a merchandise so as to entice further purchase of the product by the customer. Furthermore, once the coupons are redeemed by the customer at a retail location, the coupons must be manually processed by the retailer to provide reporting to the coupons issuers, or alternatively the coupons are sent for processing by a clearing house for redemption. The entire process is inefficient and costly. It is estimated that for 50 million discount coupons that are printed, the approximate cost of producing and redeeming these coupons would be approximately $250,000.00. 
         [0005]    From the customers&#39; perspective the discount coupons provide an attractive form of savings but the process of clipping and saving these coupons tends to be time-consuming and cumbersome. Furthermore, once these coupons are acquired by the customer, the customer must remember to bring them to the store for redemption. Often times, the customer would not remember particularly to bring the coupons when going to the store for a quick purchase. Additionally, in order to make purchase with merchandise discount coupons, the coupons associated with the desired products must be located among numerous coupons collected by a consumer, and the consumer must ensure that the coupons are to be redeemed before or on their expiry dates. Also, the coupons must be presented to the sales person at the store for scanning or otherwise entering the redemption information into the store&#39;s computer. 
         [0006]    A number of systems have been developed which address the above described problems for alleviating the tedious nature and high cost of processing discount coupons. The proposed systems eliminate the printed paper coupons by introducing, for example, a single purpose storage card such as a smart card or a magnetic strip card storing the information of the discount coupons. The cards are distributed and used by the consumers. Such storage card are expensive to produce and to issue to the consumers, and the solutions do not provide the coupons issuers with the means to customize their offers based on the consumers&#39; past shopping preferences. Furthermore, the card devices would require the stores to equip with an expensive electronic device terminal for reading them for redemption, and it is difficult for the consumer to update the card devices to acquire new coupons. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0007]    The present invention overcomes the above deficiencies by employing the consumers&#39; personal wireless devices such as the cell phones for the acquisition and redemption of discount coupons, thereby avoiding the problems of having to issue expensive single purpose storage cards to the consumers. 
         [0008]    A cell phone or other wireless device having short range wireless radio such as Bluetooth(trademark) would be employed by the consumer in the system. The short range wireless radio address of the device provides the key value identifier of the consumer in the system, and the registration record of the wireless device based on that value would be maintained at a central computer system. The record would contain a list of discount coupons with the specified discount amount, the product UPC, the expiry date, as well as any other discount coupon property defined by the coupons issuers. The discount coupons would be added to the record by the user by waving the cell phone at advertising panels such that the coupons would be added to the consumers&#39; cell phone account. Alternatively, the coupons may be loaded directly to the wireless cell phone account through a computer programming interface. The interface would allow the coupons issuers to distribute the coupons to the target consumers in the system. 
         [0009]    At the retail location, once all of the consumer&#39;s purchase items have been scanned into the store&#39;s cash register, the consumer would turn on the short range wireless radio of the cell phone to initiate the discovery mode of the cell phone. Next, the cell phone would be waved close to the short range wireless reader terminal provided at the store. The information about the read short range wireless radio address and the list of purchase items would be sent to a central computer which would compare the items purchased to the discount coupons list stored for the given account for the corresponding short range wireless radio address. The computer system would compile a list of discount amount and send it back to the terminal in the store. The total amount of the discount would be displayed on the terminal display of the terminal and more detailed receipt would be printed by the printer of the terminal which may be retained in the cash register for records and accounting purposes. The printout is an optional audit trail and it would be retailer to decide on its usage. If one or more of the purchase items are subject to additional progressive discounts, the system would utilize past purchase history to determine whether the particular item has previously been purchased by the consumer. If this is the case, an increased discount would be calculated. 
         [0010]    The central computer system would provide the retailer and the manufacturer with reconciliation functionality associated with each cashier&#39;s register, as well as a store-wide reconciliation. The reconciliation data would allow each individual manufacturer who has issued these coupons to reimburse the clearing house properly, as well as to allow the clearing house to reimburse or to be reimbursed by each individual retailer. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0011]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram of the coupons redemption system at the checkout counter according to the system of the present invention. 
           [0012]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of the entire system according to the present invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
       [0013]    As shown in the drawings, in the coupons acquisition and redemption system of the present invention, the cashier  10  scans all purchased items to provide the information for a checkout station  11 . The UPC of every scanned item is sent to a short range wireless radio terminal  12 . After all the items have been scanned, a total cost of the purchased is generated based upon the information provided in the store&#39;s network central computer  13 . The customer  14  would then locate the wireless device  15  such as the cell phone in close proximity of about 1 to 2 inches of the short range wireless radio terminal  12  associated with the cashier  10  with the wireless device&#39;s short range wireless radio turned on and operating in a discovery mode. In response to the discovery mode of the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15 , the short range wireless radio terminal  12  would initiate a reading function of the short range wireless radio address and the friendly name of the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15 . Thereafter, the short range wireless radio address, the friendly name and all the scanned UPC are sent to the network central computer system  13 . The network central computer system  13  would compare the items purchased to the discount coupons previously registered in system in an initial implementation process, and the information of which is stored for the given account identified by the corresponding short range wireless radio address of the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15 . The network computer system  13  processes the information and compiles the total amount of discount for the particular purchase and would sent the result back to the display  16  of the short range wireless radio terminal  12 , and the cashier  10  upon reading the information would enter the discount amount into the checkout station  11  to be subtracted from the total amount of the transaction. Optionally, the network central computer system  13  would send a detailed receipt to the printer  17  of the short range wireless radio terminal  12 . The receipt would be retrieved by the cashier  10 , which would be either scanned immediately for entering the information into the checkout station  11  or stored temporarily in the drawer of the cash register at the checkout station  11  for future processing. After having processed the discount amount, the cashier  10  would complete the transaction by pressing a completion button provided on the touch screen of the display  16  to forward a signal over to the network central computer system  13  where the process would commit the logic of the coupon redemption. 
         [0014]    In the initial implementation of the discount coupon acquisition, the consumer  14  collects the discount coupons by using the mobile wireless device  15  to contact a coupon issuer such as an advertising panel  18 , or a third party web site  19 , or via a mass mailing functionality provided by a system Application Program Interface (API)  20 , to register for participation in the system. During the registration process, the coupon issuer would request the consumer  14  to provide the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number of the wireless device to establish an identity of an account. The consumber  14  would enter the IMEI number into a registration form, and would also specify if mass mailing of discount coupons is allowed and the type of products interested. 
         [0015]    The advertisement panel  18  presents a visual information of the coupons that are offered and invites the consumer  14  to activate the short range mobile wireless device  15  and locating it in proximity of up to 150 feet of the advertisement panels  18 . The advertisement panels  18  in response to the request from the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15  would forward the consumer&#39;s short range wireless radio address and friendly name of the wireless device through the Application Program Interface  20  to the central computer system  13 . The network central computer system  13  would insert the discount coupons into the account identified by the short range wireless radio address and then send a confirmation back to the advertisement panels  18 . Thereafter the advertisement panels  18  would send a text message (SMS) to the consumer&#39;s mobile device  15  with the notification information confirming the acceptance of the request. 
         [0016]    When interacting with the 3 rd  party web site  19 , the consumer  14  will be requested to enter the IMEI number of the wireless device in order to receive a selected discount coupons. Upon receiving the request, the web site  19  would forward the coupons through the system&#39;s application program interface  20  to the network central computer system  13 . The network central computer system  13  would insert the selected coupons into the consumer&#39;s account identified by the IMEI number and then it would send a confirmation back to the web site  19 . Thereafter, the web site  19  would display a notification information to the consumer  14 . 
         [0017]    The coupon issuer  21  may mass mail coupons to the system via the system application program interface  20 . The coupons sent by the network central computer system  13  will be added to the consumer&#39;s account based on the preferences set by the consumer during the registration process. After a selected discount coupons have been added into the consumer&#39;s account, the network central computer system  13  will notify the consumer  14  via email or short text message (SMS). 
         [0018]    Alternatively, the consumer would be provided with a unique activation token string during the initial registration process by using the application program interface  20 . The consumer enters the activation token in the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15  as the value for the device&#39;s Bluetooth(trademark) friendly name. The retail establishment or the advertisement panel  18  reading the consumer&#39;s Bluetooth(trademark) address and friendly name would communicate the information to the network central computer system  13  for storing the Bluetooth(trademark) address on the registration record with matched Bluetooth(trademark) friendly name to the issued activation token. The network central computer system  13  would activate the registered wireless device  15  and send an activation notification to be displayed on the screen of the advertisement panel  18 , and also send a notation in the form of a text message (SMS) to the consumer&#39;s wireless device  15 . Optionally, the notation is sent to the consumer&#39;s email address provided by the consumer during the initial registration process. 
         [0019]    Also, the identity of the consumer&#39;s mobile equipment may be extended by an additional wireless identification address in the form of a RFID tag attached to the consumer&#39;s mobile wireless device. 
         [0020]    While the preferred embodiments of the invention have been described above. It will be recognized and understood that various modifications may be made therein and the appended claims are intended to cover all such modifications which may fall within the spirit and scope of the invention.