Patent ID: 8219504

Claim:
A system for estimating actual cost of a product comprising: one or more processors; and one or more memories coupled to the one or more processors, the one or more memories having stored therein instructions which when executed by the one or more processors perform a process comprising: obtaining financial data associated with a purchase of two or more products, the financial data being from two or more different contributing consumers, the one or more products comprising one or more parent products and one or more nonparent products, the obtained financial data including general and demographics data of the one or more contributing consumers; categorizing, by each respective contributing consumer using one or more tags, the financial data associated with the purchase of one or more nonparent products, the categorization indicating that the categorized one or more nonparent products are directly related to one or more of the parent products, wherein the result of the categorization includes one or more financial transactions designated as being a purchase of one or more parent products, and one or more transactions involving nonparent products being designated as being related to particular ones of the transactions involving the purchase of one or more parent products, resulting in categorized data; aggregating the categorized data according to the parent product purchase with which the financial data is associated; storing the categorized and aggregated financial data; in response to a user consumer initiated search for cost data associated with a given parent product purchase, the user consumer initiated search including general or demographics search information, searching the categorized and aggregated financial data associated with the purchase of the given parent product and for which the respective contributing consumers meet the general or demographics search information; and providing the user consumer the categorized and aggregated financial data from one or more contributing consumers associated with the purchase of the given parent product who meet the general or demographics search information, the provided information comprising a list of the given parent product and one or more related nonparent products, together with total and individual actual costs associated with the purchase of the given parent product and the one or more nonparent products associated with the parent product that contributing consumers have also purchased, wherein the financial data provides user-selectable averaged, high or low amounts for the nonparent products, according to actual cost data extracted from the aggregated financial data, and further wherein the user selects one or more nonparent products for inclusion in a total cost presentation.