Patent ID: 7979314

Claim:
A method for obtaining consumer preferences for a product/service category over a communications network from a plurality of consumers, comprising the steps of: receiving one or more product/service criteria for said product/service category from a consumer and at least one of said product/service criteria as a ranking parameter from said consumer; searching a database connected to said network having product/service information for products or services in said product/service category based solely on said product/service criteria received from said consumer, such that the search is based solely on consumer's explicit search criteria; ranking products or services in said product/service category satisfying said product/service criteria in accordance with said ranking parameter received from said consumer to provide a ranked list, thereby ranking the search result based solely on said consumer's explicit order of importance; and storing said product/service criteria received from said consumer and said ranking parameter received from said consumer as market research data of consumer preferences in said database without storing information identifying or specific to said consumer, thereby obtaining market research data anonymously based solely on consumer's explicit selections without receiving or collecting information identifying or specific to said consumer to preserve the privacy of said consumer.