Abstract:
Proposed is a social shopping platform including a social shopping website operatively connected to users through a computer network for allowing users to buy products and share shopping experience with other through the social shopping website. The social shopping website includes a recommender display and selection system for displaying the recommender information of the product and allowing the user to select the recommender of the product when the user is logged into the social shopping website and enters the product shopping page. Also, the social shopping website includes an advertisement publishing system for displaying the users and the information thereof that own the product which is most relevant to the product of which the user desires to buy and displaying the users and the information thereof that reveal the interest to the product which is relevant to the product of which the user desires to buy.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    The invention is related to a social shopping platform and the shopping method thereof, and more particularly to a social shopping platform providing recommender display and advertisement publishing and the shopping method thereof. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    With the advent of high-speed computers and broadband networks, people used to keep contact with friends and share information with friends through social networks. Also, with the popularity of online shopping, various portal websites and online shopping stores devote themselves to the e-business world to facilitate the computer users to do shopping in their online mall. In order to stimulate the buying spree, the shopping websites often introduces a recommendation system to entice computer users to publish the recommendation hyperlink for goods or the advertising graphic of the goods on his/her personal website in the social network, his/her weblog, or the instant messaging software. In this manner, friends of the publisher or the users who subscribe to the personal website or weblog of the publisher will be attracted to buy the recommended goods. If someone purchases the recommended goods within a predetermined period through the recommendation hyperlink for goods or the advertising graphic of the goods of the computer user, the shopping website will redeem a feedback bonus of a fixed percentage to the recommender. 
         [0003]    An obvious example of the aforementioned shopping recommendation system is the affiliate program of the shopping center. The operation of the affiliate program of the shopping center is described below. The computer user first has to register in the shopping center and log into the shipping center as a member of the affiliate program of the shopping center. After the member is logged into the shopping center, the user can select the goods to be recommended by the name of the goods or by the advertising graphic. The system will convert the hyperlink for goods to be recommended into a recommendation hyperlink for goods or an advertising code for the goods. After acquiring the advertising code for the goods or the converted recommendation hyperlink for goods, the user may publish the advertising code for the goods to be recommended or the recommendation hyperlink for goods to be recommended on a social network, such as Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, or Weblog. In addition, the user may publish the advertising code for the goods to be recommended or the recommendation hyperlink for goods to be recommended by instant messaging software (such as Windows Live Messenger), e-mail, or web forum. When someone of interest clicks on the recommendation hyperlink for goods or the advertising graphic of the goods and enrolls in the shopping center, and purchases the goods to be recommended within a predetermined period, the system will record the ID of the recommender and redeem a feedback bonus of a fixed percentage (usually the feedback bonus is 1%-6% of the sale price of the goods) to the recommender. An example of such reference is disclosed in the Published US Patent No. 2009/0228366 to Biris et al. 
         [0004]    Nonetheless, the aforementioned state-of-the-art shopping recommendation system still has some drawbacks. First of all, the conventional shopping recommendation system does not display the recommender information to the consumer. Thus, the consumer can not be aware of the information about the recommender. Besides, the conventional shopping recommendation system does not allow the consumer to choose the recommender on his/her own. If the consumer is notified by his/her friends to clicks other&#39;s advertising graphic of goods or the hyperlink of the goods, the system will automatically recognize the ID of the recommender to be the user who publishes the advertising graphic of goods or the hyperlink of the goods on which the consumer clicked with, instead of recognizing the ID of the recommender to be the friends of the consumer. Hence, the consumer can not let his/her friends who are desperate to win the feedback bonus to actually earn the feedback bonus. The consumer would be regretted thereby. 
         [0005]    Also, the conventional recommendation system does not track the goods owned by the user and does not share the information in connection with the goods owned by the user with the friends of the user. The conventional recommendation system can not retrieve and display the information that is most relevant to the goods of which the user desires to buy from the interactive information between the user and his/her friends, in order to influence the purchase intention of the user. The invention can address these drawbacks. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0006]    An object of the invention is to provide a social shopping platform providing recommender display and advertisement publishing for displaying the information about the recommender to the consumer. 
         [0007]    An object of the invention is to provide a social shopping platform providing recommender display and advertisement publishing for allowing the consumer to choose the recommender. 
         [0008]    An object of the invention is to provide a social shopping platform providing recommender display and advertisement publishing for tracking the goods owned by the user, sharing the information in connection with the goods owned by the user with the friends of the user, and retrieving the information that is most relevant to the goods that the user desires to buy from the interactive information between the user and his/her friends, thereby publishing a target advertisement to influence the purchase intention of the user. 
         [0009]    A broad aspect of the invention is directed to a social shopping platform including a computer network and a social network. The social network is connected to the computer network and a plurality of users for allowing each user to establish a personal webpage thereon to facilitate the users to communicate and share information with each other. The social shopping platform further includes a social shopping website connected to the social network and the users through the computer network for allowing the user to buy goods and share shopping experiences with each other through the social network. The social shopping website includes a recommender display and selection system for displaying recommender information of goods in the purchase page of the goods when an user logs in the social shopping website and enters the purchase page of the goods, and allowing the user to choose a recommender of the goods. Also, the social shopping platform further includes an advertisement publishing system for tracking and recording goods purchased on the social shopping website by each user in a database and information generated by interactions between each user and other users. When a first user logs in the social shopping website and enters a purchase page of goods, the advertisement publishing system is configured to analyze recordings of the database and display information of user who has the goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the first user desires to buy, and display information of user who is of interest in the goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the first user desires to buy. 
         [0010]    Another aspect of the invention is directed to a method for purchasing goods on a social shopping website, which includes the steps of: allowing a first user to click a hyperlink for the goods or an advertising graphic of the goods rendered by a second user and enter a purchase page of the goods accordingly; displaying a recommender of the goods on the purchase page of the goods , wherein the recommender is the second user rendering the hyperlink for the goods or the advertising graphic of the goods for the first user to click; allowing the first user to choose the recommender of the goods voluntarily; placing the goods in a shopping cart by a clicking of the first user; and proceeding to a checkout procedure. 
         [0011]    Now the foregoing and other features and advantages of the invention will be best understood through the following descriptions with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0012]      FIG. 1  shows the system architecture of the inventive social shopping platform; 
           [0013]      FIG. 2  is a flow chart showing the shopping process involved with the inventive recommender display and selection method; 
           [0014]      FIG. 3  exemplarily shows a purchase page of goods including a recommender information display area; 
           [0015]      FIG. 4  exemplarily shows a purchase page of goods including a “Change Recommender” display area; and 
           [0016]      FIG. 5  is a flow chart showing the advertisement publishing process according to the invention. 
       
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
       [0017]    Several exemplary embodiments embodying the features and advantages of the invention will be expounded in following paragraphs of descriptions. It is to be realized that the present invention is allowed to have various modification in different respects, all of which are without departing from the scope of the present invention, and the description herein and the drawings are to be taken as illustrative in nature, but not to be taken as a confinement for the invention. 
         [0018]    The invention provides a social shopping platform having a recommender display and selection system and an advertisement publishing system. Referring to  FIG. 1 , in which the system architecture of the inventive social shopping platform  100  is shown. As shown in  FIG. 1 , the inventive social shopping platform  100  includes a social shopping website  102 , a social network  104 , and a computer network  70 . The social shopping website  102  allows the computer  50   a  of the user  50  and the computer  60   a  of the user  60  to register to and log in the social shopping website  102  to do shopping through the computer network  70 . The social network  104  allows the computer  50   a  of the user  50 , the computer  60   a  of the user  60  to register to and log in the social network  104  to communicate with others through the computer network  70 . The computer network  70  may be the Internet. The social shopping website  102  is hosted by a server (not shown) including a central processing unit (CPU)  71 , a memory  72 , a system bus  73 , and a data storage unit  76 . The CPU  71  is used to perform logical operations and execute program instructions. The memory  72  is used to temporarily store the program instructions and operational data to be executed by the CPU  71 . The CPU  71 , the memory  72 , and the data storage unit  76  are interconnected together by the system bus  73 . The social shopping website  102  further includes a recommendation and sharing system  76   a,  a recommender display and selection system  76   b,  an advertisement publishing system  76   c,  and a database  76   d.  In this embodiment, the recommendation and sharing system  76   a , the recommender display and selection system  76   b,  the advertisement publishing system  76   c,  and the database  76   d  are retained in the data storage unit  76 . The recommendation and sharing system  76   a,  the recommender display and selection system  76   b,  and the advertisement publishing system  76   c  are implemented by software programs and executed by the CPU  71  to respectively carry out their functions. The social network  104  may include Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, weblogs, or web forums. The user  50  and the user  60  may respectively use the computer  50   a  and the computer  60   a  to log in the social network  104  through the computer network  70  and establish a personal webpage in the social network  104  to facilitate the communication and information sharing with friends. The user  50  and the user  60  are friends in the social network  104 . Also, the user  50  and the user  60  may use their accounts of the social network  104  to log in the social shopping website  102 . Next, the operations of the recommender display and selection system  76   b  and the advertisement publishing system  76   c  will be described in detail with reference to  FIG. 1 ,  FIG. 2 , and  FIG. 3 . 
         [0019]      FIG. 2  is a flow chart showing the shopping process involved with the inventive recommender display and selection method. Please refer to  FIG. 1  and  FIG. 2 . First of all, the user  50  logs in the social shopping website  102  by the computer  50   a,  e.g. by logging in the social shopping website  102  directly or by logging in the social shopping website  102  to the account of the social network  104 , as shown in step  201 . Next, the user  50  purchases goods in the social shopping website  102 , and recommends the purchased goods by articles or recommendation hyperlinks or advertising graphic of the goods on the personal webpage of the social network  104  by the recommendation and sharing function of the social shopping website  102 , as shown in step  202 . In this step, when the user  50  determines to execute the recommendation and sharing function of the social shopping website  102 , the recommendation and sharing system  76   a  of the social shopping website  102  will automatically generate a recommendation hyperlink embedding the identification of the recommender and record the recommendation hyperlink, and will allow the user  50  to recommend and share the goods in terms of a hyperlink for the goods or an advertising graphic of the goods on the personal webpage of the social network. Next, the user  60  browses the article in connection with the recommended goods posted by the user  50  on his/her personal webpage of the social network  104 , and the user  60  is interested in the goods recommended by the user  50  on the personal webpage of the social network  104 . Thus, the user  60  clicks the recommendation hyperlink for the recommended goods or clicks the advertising graphic of the recommended goods, as shown in step  203 . Next, the user enters the purchase page of the recommended goods on the social shopping website  102 , and the social shopping website  102  will automatically determine and record that the hyperlink for the goods or the advertising graphic clicked by the user  60  is published by the user  50  according to the recommended hyperlink embedding the ID of the recommender. Thus, the user  50  is preset as the default recommender, as shown in step  204 . Next, the recommender display and selection system  76   b  is activated to display the information about the default recommender, which may include the identification of the recommender, the nickname of the recommender, and the photograph of the recommender, as shown in step  205 . In this embodiment, the user  50  is the default recommender. Hence, the identification of the user  50 , the nickname of the user  50 , and the photograph of the user  50  will be displayed in the recommender information display area  771  on the purchase page  77 , as shown in  FIG. 3 . Next, the recommender display and selection system  76   b  allows the user  60  to determine if the recommender will be replaced by others or set as him/her, as shown in step  206 . If the user  60  determines that the recommender will be replaced by others or set as him/her, the process continues with step  207  to allow the user  60  to change the recommender, and then the process continues with step  208 . In this embodiment, the social shopping website  102  will automatically display the information about other possible recommenders in a “Change Recommender” display area  772  of the purchase page  77 , thereby allowing the user  60  to select and change the recommender, as shown in  FIG. 4 . If the user  60  does not want to change the recommender or set the recommender as him/her, the process continues with step  208 . At step  208 , the user  60  clicks the “Buy” tab or places the goods in the shopping cart. Next, the recommender display and selection system  76   b  will be activated again to allow the user  60  to determine if the recommender should be changed or if the recommender should be set as him/her, as shown in step  209 . If the user  60  determines that the recommender should be changed or that the recommender should be set as him/her, the process continues with step  210  to allow the user  60  to change recommender, and then the process continues step  211 . If the user  60  does not want to change the recommender or set the recommender as him/her, the process continues with step  211 . At step  211 , the social shopping website  102  drives the user  60  to the checkout procedure to complete the purchase of the goods. 
         [0020]      FIG. 5  shows the procedural steps of the advertisement publishing process according to the invention. Please refer to  FIG. 1 ,  FIG. 2 , and  FIG. 5 . The advertisement publishing system  76   c  will track the purchasing operation of each user on the social shopping website  102 , and record the goods purchased on the social shopping website  102  by each user. Also, the advertisement publishing system  76   c  will also track and record the information generated by the interaction between each user and his/her friends (other users). This information includes the messages brought up by the actions of users that show interest or fancy with certain goods. These actions may be perceived through keywords like “have raised a question”, “have answered a question”, “have posted an article and the text of the article shows desire or fondness”. These recordings will be retained in the database  76   d,  as shown in step  301 . When the user  60  logs in the social shopping website  102  and enters the purchase page of the goods of which he/she is of interest of fancy, as shown in step  302 , the advertisement publishing system  76   c  will analyze the recordings in the database  76   d  and display the information of user who has goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the user  60  desires to buy. This information is provided for the user  60  as a reference, as shown in step  303 . In this embodiment, the advertisement publishing system  76   c  may display the information of user who has goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the user  60  desires to buy in a first advertisement area  773  of the purchase page  77 . The first advertisement area  773  may be, for example, an advertisement area captioned with a title of “See who owns the related goods”, as shown in  FIG. 3  and  FIG. 4 . Next, the advertisement publishing system  76   c  will analyze the recordings in the database  76   d  and display the information of user who is of interest in goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the user  60  desires to buy. This information is provided for the user  60  as a reference, as shown in step  304 . In this embodiment, the advertisement publishing system  76   c  may display the information of user who is of interest in goods whose attributes are most relevant to the goods of which the user  60  desires to buy in a second advertisement area  774  of the purchase page  77 . The second advertisement area  774  may be, for example, an advertisement area captioned with a title of “The goods you might be interested in”, as shown in  FIG. 3  and  FIG. 4 . The whole process ends up with step  305 . 
         [0021]    It is noteworthy that the first advertisement area  773  and the second advertisement area  774  may be published in another social shopping website (not shown), the website of others (or a third-party website, which is not shown in the drawings), or published in a personal webpage of the social network  104  (such as Facebook page of others, Twitter page of others, Plurk page of others, weblogs, or web forums) through the computer network  70 . The website that is set to publish the advertisement is connected with the social shopping network  102  and allows two-way information communication in connection with goods and users. For example, when an user browses the weblogs of others and finds some commentary information and photographic information of certain goods on the weblog, the first advertisement area  773  and the second advertisement area  774  may be set to be displayed on the weblog. In this manner, the recommending and target advertisement is attained in order to influence the shopping preference and purchase intention of the user, so that the user connects the social shopping network  102  to proceed with online shopping. 
         [0022]    In conclusion, the invention proposes a social shopping platform providing recommender display and advertisement publishing and the shopping method thereof. The social shopping platform  100  includes a social shopping website  102 , a social network  104 , and a computer network  70 . The social shopping website  102  includes a data storage unit, which hosts a recommender display and selection system and an advertisement publishing system. When an user  60  clicks the recommendation link posted by an user  50  on the social network  104  and enters the purchase link of the social shopping website  102 , the recommender display and selection system displays the recommender information (user  50 ) on the purchase page of the goods and allows the user  60  to choose others or him/her as the recommender. When a first user enters the purchase page of goods on the social shopping website  102 , the advertisement publishing system can display the information of user who has the same goods or related goods or display the information of user who is of interest of fancy in the goods of which the first user desires to buy. Thus, the user can determine who will be the recommender voluntarily. That is, the user can decide who will receive the feedback bonus as the purchase process of the goods has been completed. Also, when the user enters the purchase page of goods, items owned by friends of the user will be tracked. Such information will be provided for the user, so that the user can share the shopping experience with friends. Also, the information generated by the interaction between the user and his/her friends will be scrutinized, and the information that is most relevant to the goods of which the user desires to buy is published in the form of target advertisement in order to influence the purchase intention of user. 
         [0023]    While the invention has been described in terms of what are presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention need not be restricted to the disclosed embodiment. On the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims which are to be accorded with the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar structures. Therefore, the above description and illustration should not be taken as limiting the scope of the invention which is defined by the appended claims.