Patent ID: 8630923

Claim:
A method for selling products over a network, comprising: storing vendor information for a plurality of vendors in a database, said database comprising at least one storage device that is accessible over the network, and said vendor information including a vendor address; storing product information for a plurality of products, each product being associated with one or more of the plurality of vendors, each vendor assigning a product price to each product associated with the vendor; storing information indicative of a condition of one or more of the plurality of products; storing consumer registration information for a plurality of consumers, said consumer information including, for each consumer, a payment mechanism and a consumer shipping address; causing a user interface for searching the product information to be displayed to a consumer; receiving a user input via the user interface; after receiving the user input, performing a plurality of operations including: identifying the consumer from the plurality of consumers based on the consumer registration information; determining the consumer shipping address corresponding to the identified consumer; identifying one of the plurality of products based on the received user input; determining that there is at least a subset of said vendors offering said identified product for sale; selecting, without user input and on behalf of the identified consumer, from the subset of vendors an ideal vendor that is ideal to the identified consumer, the ideal vendor being selected based on one or more of a lowest product price, a lowest shipping cost, a shortest shipping time, or a best vendor rating compared to other vendors in the subset; determining a shipping cost for shipping the identified product to the identified consumer, the shipping cost being determined based on the consumer shipping address corresponding to the identified consumer; and determining a total price for the identified product, the total price being a combination of (a) the product price of the identified product assigned by the ideal vendor and (b) the shipping cost; after performing the plurality of operations and in response to receiving the user input, causing (a) a product representation corresponding to the identified product, (b) the total price for the identified product, (c) an option to purchase said identified product, and (d) information indicative of a condition of the identified product to be simultaneously displayed to the identified consumer; and in response to receiving a selection of the option to purchase said identified product by said identified consumer, causing a transaction to be performed between said identified consumer and said ideal vendor for said identified product.