Patent ID: 8060412

Claim:
A method of obtaining merchandise information from a merchandise locating digital processing system for a store, comprising: receiving into the merchandise locating digital processing system via a communication network a spoken information inquiry from a customer regarding a location of a particular product in the store; using speech recognition technology within the merchandise locating digital processing system to recognize the content of the spoken information inquiry from the customer; processing information received via the communication network to determine a location of the customer; using the customer location to determine a location of a branch of the store closest to the customer; searching for the inquired information regarding the particular product in a merchandise database within the merchandise locating digital processing system by initially comparing the spoken information inquiry from the customer only to products within the merchandise database that are available at the branch of the store closest to the customer location to thereby enhance the accuracy of recognizing the content of the spoken information inquiry from the customer; retrieving the inquired information from the merchandise database based on the content of the information inquiry recognized by the merchandise locating digital processing system, the retrieved information including whether the particular product is available at the branch of the store and including a physical location of the product within the branch of the store when the product is available; and transmitting the inquired information from the merchandise locating digital processing system to the customer via the communication network to inform the customer whether the particular product is available at the branch of the store and to inform the customer where the particular product is physically located within the branch of the store when the product is available.