Patent ID: 7177825

Claim:
A method for effecting electronic commerce via a data network, the data network comprising a customer interface subsystem for facilitating ordering transactions of items selected by at least one customer; an order management subsystem for managing customer orders; an order fulfillment subsystem for facilitating fulfillment of customer orders; and a delivery subsystem for facilitating delivery of items in the customer orders to customers, said method comprising: receiving a customer order at the customer interface subsystem, the customer order including information relating to at least one ordered item, and including information regarding a customer-specified delivery window time; fulfilling at least a portion of the customer order at the order fulfillment subsystem after a pre-determined cutoff time has passed, said fulfilling including processing each inventory item which has been fulfilled for delivery to the customer so as to have one or more items in the fulfilled order delivered to the customer; and generating billing data relating to the customer order, wherein though the customer has submitted the customer order and the customer order has been received, said method allows the customer to modify the customer order before the pre-determined cutoff time has passed, wherein before the predetermined cutoff time has passed, the customer interface subsystem allows the customer to modify the quantity of at least one item in the customer order to be physically delivered to the customer based on a delivery address associated with the customer, wherein the customer selects one of a plurality of delivery window times within a day to be the customer-specified delivery window time, and wherein the pre-determined cutoff time is dependent on the specified delivery window time, and is not pre-determined by the customer.