Patent ID: 7660738

Claim:
A method in a computing system for collecting pricing information, comprising: in a server computer system: generating a web page integrally containing: (1) an identification of a selected vendor, (2) a description of a selected item that is for sale by the selected vendor at a sales price, (3) an ordering control operable to order the selected item, and (4) a competitive price information submission control operable to provide information about a sale of the selected item by a competitor of the selected vendor; transmitting the generated web page to a client computer system; in the client computer system: receiving the transmitted web page; displaying the received web page; receiving customer input serving to operate the competitive price information submission control contained by the displayed web page, wherein the customer input does not contain information about the identity of the selected item as part of the operation of the competitive price information submission control and wherein the customer input corresponds to input received from a user not having authority to modify the selected item's sales price; transmitting to the server computer system customer inputted information identifying both (1) a competitor of the selected vendor, and (2) a price charged by the competitor of the selected vendor for the selected item; in the server computer system: receiving the customer inputted information transmitted by the client computer system; without modifying the selected item's sales price, updating a data structure containing information regarding a total number of received customer submitted competitive price submissions corresponding to the competitor of the selected vendor identified in the customer inputted information; and determining a priority for modifying the selected item's sales price based at least in part on the total number of received customer inputted competitive price submissions.