Patent ID: 6963848

Claim:
A method of encouraging customers to provide reviews of purchased items, the method comprising: receiving over a network an order from a first customer for an item purchased from an electronic catalog; estimating by what date the first customer will have at least initially evaluated the item based at least on the item type; initiating an electronic transmission, based at least in part on the estimated date, to the first customer on or after the estimated date of a message requesting the first customer to provide a review of the item to thereby encourage the first customer to provide at least one review, wherein the message includes a link to an electronic review form and activation of the link by the first customer causes the review form to be presented to the first customer; receiving the review from the first customer electronically via the review form; individually presenting the first customer review in a group of reviews to a second customer interested in the item; and based at least in part on the first customer's review, using a collaborative filtering process to automatically generate personalized recommendations for the first customer of other items.