Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/6873968
Timestamp: 2019-12-11 06:49:32
Document Index: 59444967

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115', 'art 115']

US Patent for System, method and computer program product for on-line real-time price comparison and adjustment within a detachable virtual shopping cart Patent (Patent # 6,873,968 issued March 29, 2005) - Justia Patents Search
Justia Patents US Patent for System, method and computer program product for on-line real-time price comparison and adjustment within a detachable virtual shopping cart Patent (Patent # 6,873,968)
System, method and computer program product for on-line real-time price comparison and adjustment within a detachable virtual shopping cart
Feb 10, 2001 - IBM
Electronic shopping (or e-shopping) has been gaining popularity as the popularity of the World Wide Web increases. E-shopping continues to evolve from a means of providing an easy way of accessing (and publishing) information on the Internet to a virtual marketplace where almost every type of merchandise can be traded, as it is in the physical world. As more retail businesses market their merchandise over the WWW, it will become more important for a business to distinguish itself from the competition. If the retail business has an established brand name, it will have an advantage over strictly Internet retailers when creating a web store. The brand name recognition translates to consumer recognition for an on-line presence, significantly lowering the retail business' cost of entry into Internet retailing, compared to the cost of entry for a competitor that operates solely on the Internet. In addition, it is possible for the retail business to combine the best of Internet retailing with standard retailing by joining its web store's ease of access, ease of use, and significant inventory features with its delivery and distribution channels and proximity of its physical locations to the shoppers. For example, a consumer in a Barnes and Noble store might be offered kiosk access to the Barnes&Noble.com® web site if the consumer is unable to locate a book in the store. Alternatively, a shopper on Home Depot's web site might be allowed to purchase a yard of gravel which could then be delivered to their home from their local Home Depot retail store.
An outgrowth of the popularity of Internet or on-line shopping is the advent of on-line comparison shopping engines. Price comparison tools, often promoted by web portals such as Yahoo!®, or AltaVista®, or shopping services such as Bluefly.com or MySimon.com are essentially web search engines that allow a user to search a population of web merchants for the lowest price for a desired item. These search engines allow a shopper to enter a key word which is usually a description of the desired item. In response to the shopper's query, the search engines return a set of corresponding web-based matches listing the vendors or vendors' web sites that offer the desired item. Typically, these searches are undertaken on an item by item basis and the search is performed against a set of retailers determined by the search engine owner. The population of the merchants searched may be open-ended as in the case of search engines that use agents or “bots” to scan the web for such items or closed as in search engines that search only across a group of subscribed merchants.
In response to this challenge, services such as IChoose.com, and Clickthebutton.com® have appeared which permit a shopper to engage in comparison shopping after having identified an item of merchandise to purchase at an Internet retailer's site. In the case of IChoose.com, the price comparison takes place at the merchant's web site. Software is provided to the on-line shopper that detects when the shopper is about to make a purchase and quickly scans the IChoose.com database to provide a last-minute price check for the items being purchased. IChoose.com also offers an analogous product to Internet merchants that detects when a customer is on the verge of exercising the IChoose.com option to leave their site for a better price and lets the merchant counteroffer with a lower price quote to retain the shopper.
Clickthebutton.com® offers a service that is generally similar to IChoose.com. The Clickthebutton.com® software installs a button on the user's computer screen or “desktop”. While shopping in an Internet store, the user may select an item and simply click the button on their desktop, generating a client-based request to a Clickthebutton.com® server hosting a proprietary real time shopping comparison engine. The shopping comparison engine returns to the shopper prices along with pointers to the web sites with comparable items.
The Clickthebutton.com® approach also presents several disadvantages. Since a third party does the comparison-shopping, the customer does not know which merchants the shopping engine checked. As a result, the customer may not be offered the lowest price available for the desired item either because the comparison search was biased toward subscribing merchants or because the comparison search was not comprehensive. In addition, the merchant is afforded no opportunity to counteroffer against lower prices.
In the foregoing examples of current Internet comparison shopping systems, the Internet merchant is not offered significant value by the comparison shopping engine even though the shopper performs price comparisons while at the merchant's Internet web site. Since comparison-shopping is done by an unknown third party that may or may not be performing an unbiased or comprehensive search, the comparison-shopping feature provided by IChoose.com or Clickthebutton.com® might not offer the best possible comparison shopping experience for the customer. In addition, these services present a distinct disadvantage to the merchants because they either do not provide a counter offer option, or only provide the counter offer option based on the limited set of comparison prices generated by the comparison-shopping engine used by these services.
The shopping cart may be detached either by launching it in a separate browser window or by converting it from a navigable web site to a “framed” web site (for example, by using Netscape® Frames technology) so that the shopping cart's contents persist in a shopping frame while the shopper continues to navigate the WWW. In either case, the shopping cart and its content persist on the shopper's computer screen in a portable fashion as the customer visits competitor's web sites to browse for lower prices on the items in their cart. In a preferred embodiment, the shopping cart “belongs” to the original or host merchant, i.e., only items from the host merchant are placed in the shopping cart for purchase. As the customer browses the WWW in search of lower price items, the items in the cart are compared to those found at rival merchant's web sites.
Item number, which is the number used to represent the cart item;
Item description, which is the description of an item and is comprised of item description codes such as UN/SPSC, the United Nations Standard Products and Services Codes;
Price, which is the price of the item quoted by the host merchant;
Rival bid (or offer), which is the lower price offered by a rival merchant; and
Merchant ID, which is the identifier of the merchant offering the rival bid.
The item information data structure contains information that the host merchant maintains about each item that it offers for sale, specifically the pricing strategy for counter offering against rival bids. Item information includes, for example, the current list price of an item, the lowest price the host merchant will counter offer against a rival bid, the average price for which the item is sold. The average price takes into account the host merchant's price, competitive prices including previous rival bids, and the host merchant's counter offers. Item information is stored in the persistent database 110.
Detach action, which writes the shopping cart 115 to the persistent database 110 and marks the shopping cart 115 as detached;
Checkout action, which initiates the purchase operation for the items in the shopping cart 115;
Save action, which writes the shopping cart 115 to the persistent database 110 and marks the shopping cart 115 as saved;
Resume action, which retrieves the previously saved shopping cart 115 from the persistent database 110 and deletes the persistent copy;
Delete action, which removes the in-memory copy and/or the persistent shopping cart 115;
Add item action, which creates a cart item from the input data and adds that item to the shopping cart 115;
Update item action, which retrieves the designated cart item and updates the requested fields;
Delete item action, which deletes the designated cart item; and
Compare item action, which determines whether a rival merchant is underbidding the host merchant's price for an item.
When the shopper 80 locates a lower priced item at a rival merchant's web site, the extract and verify module 95 compares the price of the item in the portable shopping cart 115 with that of the rival merchant. The price comparison is triggered either by the shopper 80 at the rival merchant's web site, or by the host merchant when a rival merchant's web site is recognized. The host merchant then ensures the validity of the rival merchant's site by activating the validation module 100.
a shopping cart manager that creates the virtual shopping cart and that detaches the virtual shopping cart prior to, or upon a shopper leaving a site of the host merchant to a different merchant's site;
an extract and verify module that performs a comparison between a host merchant's offer for the item and an offer from the different merchant's site;
a counter offer module that selectively requests a counter offer from the host merchant relative to the item;
a validation module that automatically prepares a counter offer relative to an underbid offer from the different merchant's site; and
the shopping cart manager automatically and selectively updates the item information in the virtual shopping cart to reflect the host merchant's counter offer, so that when the shopper returns to the host merchant's site for checkout, the shopper acquires the item at the host merchant's counter offer.
2. The system of claim 1, wherein the validation module assesses the validity of the different merchant.
on item number, which is the number used to represent the item;
an item description, which is the description of an item;
a price, which is the price of the item quoted by the host merchant;
a rival offer, which is the offer made by the different merchant;
a merchant identifier, which is the identifier of the different merchant.
6. The system of claim 3, further including a browser that manages a persistent shopping session at the different merchant's site.
detach action, which writes the shopping cart to the persistent database and marks the shopping cart as detached;
checkout action, which initiates a purchase operation of the item offered by the host merchant;
save action, which writes the shopping cart to the persistent database and marks the shopping cart as saved;
resume action, which retrieves a previously saved shopping cart from the persistent database;
delete action, which removes a previously saved copy of the shopping cart;
add item action, which creates and adds a item to the shopping cart;
update item action, which retrieves a designated cart item and updates corresponding information fields;
delete item action, which deletes the designated cart item;
compare item action, which determines whether the different merchant has underbidded the host merchant's offer for the item.
8. The system of claim 1, wherein the shopping cart is in any one of the following states: a detached state, or a saved state.
wherein the information maintained on the rival merchants includes any one or more of: frequency that shoppers initiate comparison shopping at specific rival merchants; frequency that the rival merchants underbid the host merchant's offer; amounts by which a rival merchant has underbid the host merchant's offer.
10. A method of managing on on-line virtual shopping cart which contains information about an item offered by a host merchant, comprising:
automatically initiating a shopping session by creating the virtual shopping cart and by detaching the virtual shopping cart prior to, or upon a shopper leaving a site of the host merchant to rival merchant's site;
performing a comparison between a host merchant's offer for the item and an offer from the rival merchant's site;
the host merchant automatically preparing a counter offer relative to an underbid offer from the rival merchant's site; and
the host merchant automatically and selectively updating the item information in the virtual shopping cart to reflect the host merchant's counter offer, so that when the shopper returns to the host merchant's site for checkout, the shopper acquires the item at the host merchant's counter offer.
11. The method of claim 10, further comprising assessing the validity of the rival merchant.
add item action, which creates and adds an item to the shopping cart;
compare item action, which determines whether the rival merchant has underbidded the host merchant's offer for the item.
14. The method of claim 10, wherein if the rival merchant's offer is more competitive than the host merchant's offer, presenting the host merchant with an opportunity to counter-offer the rival merchant's offer.
a first set of instruction codes for creating the virtual shopping cart and for detaching the virtual shopping cart prior to, or upon a shopper leaving a site of the host merchant to a different merchant's site;
a second set of instruction codes for selectively requesting a counter offer from the host merchant relative to the item;
a third of instruction codes for automatically preparing a counter offer relative to an underbid offer from the different merchant's site; and
a fourth set of instruction codes for automatically and selectively updating the item information in the virtual shopping cart to reflect the host merchant's counter offer, so that when the shopper returns to the host merchant's site for checkout, the shopper acquires the item at the host merchant's counter offer.
21. The computer program product of claim 20, further comprising a fifth set of instruction codes for validating the different merchant.
WO 9966438 December 1999 WO
Ichoose, http://web.archive.org/web/200000105064034/http://www.ichose.com, dated Jan. 5, 2000, 9 pages.*
Mack, Ann, Choose Me, Ichoose alerts e-shoppers to better offers, Brandweek, Apr. 10, 2000.*
UDDI Executive White Paper, pp. 1-3, Sep. 6, 2000.
Patent number: 6873968
Patent Publication Number: 20020111873
Inventors: Marc Alan Ehrlich (Somers, NY), Reiner Kraft (Gilroy, CA), Joann Ruvolo (San Jose, CA)
Assistant Examiner: Mark Fadok
Application Number: 09/780,812
Current U.S. Class: 705/26; 705/27; Price Look-up Processing (e.g., Updating) (705/20)