Patent ID: 8655721

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of negotiating an electronic commerce (e-commerce) transaction between a merchant and a consumer for the sale of a selected good comprising performing, via a processor, the steps of: identifying an asking price for the selected good; retrieving from memory merchant business objectives (MBOs) for the merchant and merchant data about prior transactions between the consumer and the merchant, wherein the MBOs specify a plurality of different objectives based on consumer purchase frequency, consumer payment history, and consumer credit history; based upon the MBOs and the merchant data, selecting one of the plurality of different objectives and determining a corresponding merchant valuation for each of a plurality of classes of merchant-requested information based on the one of the plurality of different objectives; retrieving consumer privacy rules (CPRs) from a different memory; based upon the CPRs, determining a consumer-specific minimal valuation for each of a plurality of classes of consumer-specific information; determining whether an agreement can be reached for a sale of the selected good with an incentive for providing consumer-specific information from the at least one class of consumer-specific information, wherein the incentive is determined based upon a comparison of a merchant valuation corresponding to the at least one merchant-requested information class and a minimal valuation corresponding to the at least one consumer-specific information class; consummating the e-commerce transaction for the sale of the selected good with said incentive if it is determined that an agreement can be reached.