Patent ID: 6850899

Claim:
A method comprising: creating a primary online shopping basket having an associated basket ID and a first unique customer ID; creating multiple secondary online shopping baskets, wherein each of the multiple secondary online shopping baskets is associated with a second customer ID from a set of customer IDs, wherein no two of the secondary online shopping baskets are associated with a same second customer ID; associating each of the secondary online shopping baskets with customer-defined rules that define purchasing requirements for items assigned to each of the secondary online shopping baskets, wherein the customer-defined rules include a price ceiling for each of the secondary online shopping baskets; determining whether selected items selected for entry into the secondary online shopping baskets satisfy the customer-defined rules, wherein a value of the selected items is less than the price ceiling; disallowing entry into the secondary online shopping baskets of the selected items that do not satisfy the customer-defined rules; and merging the secondary online shopping baskets into the primary online shopping basket.