Patent ID: 8108423

Claim:
A method for use by a network accessible computing device providing customized e-commerce content for a user on the network, the computing device having a segmentation engine that includes a user context containing data regarding the user, a content management system for storing an e-commerce content, a controlled vocabulary including controlled vocabulary elements categorizing the e-commerce content, an ontology using the controlled vocabulary for referencing the e-commerce content of the content management system, a plurality of segment definitions defining one or more segments, each segment definition matching content types to controlled vocabulary elements, and a plurality of segment rules for categorizing the user into the one or more segments, each segment rule relying on the user context to associate with each segment definition from the plurality of segment definitions, the method comprising: receiving a request from the user over the network for the e-commerce content with defined content types; identifying segment definitions associated with the user by parsing the plurality of segment rules to categorize the user into the one or more segments; determining controlled vocabulary elements by matching the identified segment definitions with the defined content types; searching the ontology to locate references to the e-commerce content using the determined controlled vocabulary elements; retrieving the customized e-commerce content from the content management system by using the located references to obtain the e-commerce content; and providing the customized e-commerce content to the user over the network; wherein the determined controlled vocabulary elements are refined by a plurality of business rules prior to searching the ontology using the determined controlled vocabulary elements.