Patent ID: 6976006

Claim:
A method for using a computer for presenting a price comparison to a prospective buyer for products offered for sale by a plurality of merchants, said merchants stocking said products in stores that said prospective buyer may personally visit to see and/or touch and/or feel said products, said method comprising collecting information from a plurality of said merchants that comprises data on said products including price; storing said data into at least one of a plurality of databases; entering a product and a state into the computer by a prospective buyer; presenting a plurality of records associated with merchants having local stores in said state wherein the records show a price comparison between the merchants having local stores to said prospective buyer; collecting additional information from sales circulars collecting information relating to merchant name, merchant address, product description, model number, regular price, sales price, coupons, rebates, colors, or sizes; entering attributes into a search key; entering geographical region, postal code, town name, county name, state name, product name, product category, model number, product description, price, product features, or brand name into the search key; sorting the database according to model number; entering data for merchants offering a specific product in a specific state into said at least one of a plurality of databases, wherein the data includes merchant name, product description, sales price, coupons or rebates; providing access to said at least one of a plurality of databases through a browser interface; presenting options to the prospective buyer for choosing a state and a product; choosing a state and a product by the prospective buyer; retrieving the data after the state and product are chosen; sorting records in an ascending order based on sales price into a listing; presenting the prospective buyer with the listing of merchants offering the product for sale in the chosen state; furnishing an option to the prospective buyer to initiate sorting based on a merchant name; mapping the data to a unique address for a geographical area-product combination pair; connecting to the unique address; immediately presenting comparison data for a unique address of a geographical area-product combination pair to the prospective buyer; checking inventory at a local store of a merchant upon request of the prospective buyer to determine availability of a chosen product; reserving the chosen product at the local store for pickup after determining availability has been performed; entering a registration token or a credit card number; accepting the registration token or credit card number by the merchant; guaranteeing a purchase by the merchant based on the accepting of the registration token or credit card number by the merchant.