Patent ID: 8249947

Claim:
A method for educating potential customers and gauging a level of interest in purchasing a vehicle seat assembly or subassembly, the method comprising: providing a showroom including a first physical seat component display including physical seat components and a second physical seat component display, the second seat component display including physical seat components different than the physical seat components of the first seat component display; providing a vehicle seat component database defining characteristics of various seat components, including the components of the first and second seat component displays; creating a customer seat selection report for a particular vehicle, the report including basic vehicle information; providing a first terminal in the showroom adjacent the first seat component display for input of customer data associated with the first seat component display into the report; providing a second terminal in the showroom adjacent the second seat component display for input of customer data associated with the second seat component display into the report; connecting the first and second terminals to the seat component database, entering a first seat component of the first seat component display from the seat component database into the report from the first terminal; determining whether the first seat component is compatible with the basic vehicle information; accepting the first seat component into the vehicle report if the first seat component is compatible with the basic vehicle information; entering a second seat component of the second seat component display from the seat component database into the report from the second terminal; determining whether the second seat component is compatible with both the basic vehicle information and the first accepted seat component; accepting the second seat component into the vehicle report if the second seat component is compatible with both the basic vehicle information and the first accepted seat component; signaling that a change must be made to the basic vehicle information or the first accepted seat component if the second seat component is incompatible with either the basic vehicle information or the first accepted vehicle seat component and is to be included in the report.