Patent ID: 7006990

Claim:
A method for selecting, in an electronic product catalog system, a question to be presented to a user of the system to assist identification of a suitable product from a set of potentially suitable products according to the user's needs, the question being selected from a group of questions stored in said system, which method comprises: processing in the electronic product catalog system product data stored in the electronic product catalog system; defining, in the electronic product catalog system, features of products in said set and product scores associated with respective products in said set, and rule data stored in the electronic product catalog system; defining, in the electronic product catalog system, rules relating answers associated with said questions to product feature constraints, to calculate question scores (Q s ) for respective said questions such that the question score (Q s ) for each question is dependent on one of: (a) for each rule relating to any answer associated with that question, the product scores of any products excluded from said set if said rule relating to an answer associated with that question is effective; (b) for each rule relating to any answer associated with that question, the product scores of any products retained in said set if said rule relating to an answer associated with that question is effective; processing, in the electronic product catalog system, the product data and the rule data to calculate weights (W R ) for respective rules such that the weight (W R ) for each rule is dependent on one of (c) the product scores of any products excluded from the set if that rule is effective, and (d) the product scores of any products retained in the set if that rule is effective; for each rule, assigning answer scores (A s ) dependent on the weight (W R ) of that rule to the answers to which that rule relates; calculating, in the electronic product catalog system, the question scores (Q s ) such that the question score (Q s ) for each question is dependent on the answer scores (A s ) for the answers associated with that question; and selecting, in the electronic product catalog system, the question to be presented to the user in dependence on said question scores (Q s ).