Patent ID: 7433841

Claim:
A method of participating by a purchaser in a plurality of negotiations for purchasable items, where an item may be a good or a service, in order to obtain one of a plurality of alternative collections of complementary purchasable items, comprising: inputting in a computer processor a requirement for at least one item desired to be purchased; identifying by the computer processor the plurality of alternative collections of complementary purchasable items that satisfy the requirement; maintaining in a computer memory accessible by the computer processor a probabilistic model for each one of said plurality of negotiations, wherein said probabilistic model contains computer executable codes which perform the following process: communicating the identified plurality of alternative collections of complementary purchasable items to said probabilistic model; retrieving results from past negotiations from a database for said complementary purchasable items, said results including past successful bids or offers used to purchase said complementary purchasable items in past negotiations; calculating an expected cost to said purchaser of purchasing each purchasable item in the alternative collection of complementary purchasable items based on said past successful bids or offers used to purchase said complementary purchasable items in said past negotiations; and determining an expected value for said alternative collection of complementary purchasable items, wherein the expected value for the alternative collection of complementary purchasable items comprises a difference between a worth of said alternative collection of complementary purchasable items and a sum of the expected costs for each purchasable item in said alternative collection of complementary purchasable items, the worth being an input value obtained from the purchaser; receiving the determined expected values for each of the plurality of the alternative collections of complementary purchasable items at the computer processor by executing the probabilistic model for each one of said plurality of negotiations; identifying by the computer processor at least one collection of the plurality of the complementary collections of purchasable items, wherein the identified complimentary collection has the highest expected value among the expected values determined by the probabilistic model; and making bids or offers on behalf of the purchaser for purchasable items in the identified collection meeting the requirement, wherein said purchasable items are offered to be purchased in combination to meet a predetermined quantity requirement and to meet a purchaser's or a customer's offered price to pay for said combination of purchasable items comprising different goods or services.