System and method for sales generation in conjunction with a vehicle data system

• US 10,489,809 B2
• Filed: 02/15/2019
• Issued: 11/26/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: TrueCar, Inc.
• Original Assignee: TrueCar, Inc.
• Inventors: Inghelbrecht, Philip, Painter, Scott
• Primary Examiner(s): Palavecino, Kathleen
• Application Number:
  US16/277,434
• Publication Number:
  US 20190180305A1
• Time in Patent Office: 284 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0206 Price or cost determination based on market factors
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0278 Product appraisal
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0282 Rating or review of business operators or products
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0283 Price estimation or determination
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0605 Supply or demand aggregation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0609 Buyer or seller confidence or verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0611 Request for offers or quotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0621 Item configuration or customization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0627 using item specifications
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0629 for generating comparisons
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0643 Graphical representation of items or shoppers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting

Abstract

Embodiments of sales generation, including sales generation employing reverse lead generation using vehicle data systems and methods, are presented herein. In particular, in certain embodiments a user may utilize the vehicle data system to obtain pricing data corresponding to a desired vehicle configuration. When the user is presented with the pricing data associated with the specified vehicle configuration the user may additionally be presented with an upfront price offered by a dealer, where by providing their personal information the user may obtain the name of the dealer offering the upfront price and may additionally be offered the opportunity to purchase the desired, or similar, vehicle at the upfront price.

Claims

1. A vehicle data system comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer code for processing distributed vehicle data, the computer code comprising code for;

obtaining a set of historical transaction records from a first set of distributed sources, each transaction record is associated with a corresponding vehicle identification number (VIN);

enhancing the historical transaction records with data collected from a second set of distributed sources by VIN;

binning the historical transaction records based on at least one vehicle attribute and geography;

applying a first set of rules to the enhanced historical transaction records to generate a dealer quality score for each dealer in a set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers;

providing a web page to a client computer, the web page having one or more input fields for a user to provide a user-specified vehicle configuration comprising a set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

receiving over a network via the web page the set of user-specified vehicle attributes, the set of vehicle attributes;

generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes comprising;

applying a second set of rules to determine a set of selected dealers as a function of a user-specified geography, the user-specified vehicle configuration and the dealer quality scores;

applying a third set of rules to determine, from the set of selected dealers, a best upfront price corresponding to the user-specified vehicle configuration;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display the best up front price;

sending the HTML to the client computer.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes comprises:

applying a fourth set of rules to select a bin based on the set of user-specified vehicle attributes, the first set of rules selected based on at least one user-specified vehicle attribute and geography;

applying a fifth set of rules to select a dealer cost model based on at least one user-specified vehicle attribute;

applying the selected dealer cost model to a set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin to generate a dealer cost;

applying the selected price ratio model corresponding to the selected bin to the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin to generate a price ratio;

generating an average price paid for the user-specified vehicle configuration as a function of dealer cost and price ratio;

generating one or more relative price ranges based on the average price paid for the user-specified vehicle configuration and a standard deviation of historical pricing data determined from the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin;

fitting a curve fit to the price data from the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin; and

generating HTML to cause the browser at the client computer to display the curve with the relative prices ranges visually represented on the curve in association with the best up front price.

3. The system of claim 2, comprising code for:

generating a dealer cost model for each of a set of manufacturers based on invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each dealer cost model defining holdback as a function of one or more additional pieces of invoice data;

binning the historical transaction records based on at least one vehicle attribute and geography; and

generating a price ratio model for each bin based on multivariable regression analysis of a set of vehicle attributes in the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to that bin, each price ratio model defining price ratio as a function of one or more vehicle attributes in the set of vehicle attributes.

4. The system of claim 1, comprising code for:

obtaining a second set of historical transaction records from the first set of distributed sources;

applying the first set of rules to the new historical transaction records to update the dealer quality score for each dealer in the set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers.

5. The system of claim 3, comprising applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction records to remove one or more records of the set of historical transaction records.

6. The system of claim 3, comprising applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction data to replace vehicle data of one or more historical transaction records.

7. The system of claim 3, further comprising applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

8. A vehicle data system comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer code for processing distributed vehicle data, the computer code comprising code for;

obtaining a set of historical transaction records from a first set of distributed sources, each transaction record;

binning the set of historical transaction records based on at least one vehicle attribute;

applying a first set of rules to the historical transaction records to generate a dealer quality score for each dealer in a set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers;

providing a web page to a client computer, the web page having one or more input fields for a user to provide a user-specified vehicle configuration comprising a set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

receiving over a network via the web page the set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes, generating the responsive web page comprising;

applying a second set of rules to determine a set of selected dealers as a function of a user-specified geography, the user-specified vehicle configuration and the dealer quality scores;

applying a third set of rules to determine, from the set of selected dealers, a best upfront price offered by one of the set of selected dealers corresponding to the user-specified vehicle configuration;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display the best upfront price on a curve about an average price for the user-selected configuration, the curve based on a set of historical transaction records corresponding to a selected bin selected based on a user-specified geography and at least one-user specified attribute; and

communicating the responsive web page to the client computer.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising code for:

generating a dealer cost model for each of a set of manufacturers based on invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each dealer cost model defining holdback as a function of one or more additional pieces of invoice data;

generating a price ratio model for each bin, each price ratio model comprising an output weighted variable set as a function of a set of vehicle attributes in the historical transaction records corresponding to that bin; and

wherein the curve is based on applying a selected dealer cost model selected based on at least a user-specified manufacturer and a selected price ratio model corresponding to the selected bin selected based on at least a user-specified geography to the set of historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

10. The system of claim 9, comprising code for:

obtaining a second set of historical transaction records from the first set of distributed sources;

applying the first set of rules to the new historical transaction records to update the dealer quality score for each dealer in the set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers.

11. The system of claim 10, comprising code for applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction records to remove one or more records of the set of historical transaction records.

12. The system of claim 10, comprising code for applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction data to replace vehicle data of one or more historical transaction records.

13. The system of claim 10, comprising code for applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the binning rules are configured to bin the historical transaction records by trim level or attribute level based on a number of historical transaction records associated with the selected bin.

15. A vehicle data system comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer code for processing distributed vehicle data, the computer code comprising code for;

obtaining a set of historical transaction records from a first set of distributed sources;

applying cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction records to generate a set of cleansed historical transaction records, comprising;

applying a first set of rules to cleanse the historical transaction records, the first set of rules defining transaction records to be removed as a function of one or more of required fields, transaction price, total gross or mileage;

applying a second set of rules to the set of cleansed historical transaction records to generate a dealer quality score for each dealer in a set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers;

providing a web page to a client computer, the web page having one or more input fields for a user to provide a user-specified vehicle configuration comprising a set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes, generating the responsive web page comprising;

applying a third set of rules to determine a set of selected dealers as a function of a user-specified geography, the user-specified vehicle attributes and the dealer quality scores;

applying a fourth set of rules to determine, from the set of selected dealers, a best upfront price corresponding to the user-specified vehicle configuration;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display the best up front price; and

sending the HTML to the client computer.

16. The system of claim 15, comprising code for:

applying a dealer cost model and a price ratio model selected based on the user-specified vehicle attributes to a set of cleansed historical transaction records for a bin corresponding to the user-specified vehicle attributes to generate relative price ranges and an output curve about an average price for the user-specified vehicle configuration; and

generating HTML configured to cause the browser at the client computer to display the curve with the relative prices ranges visually represented on the curve in association with the best up front price.

17. The system of claim 16, comprising code for:

generating a dealer cost model for each of a set of manufacturers based on invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each dealer cost model defining holdback as a function of one or more additional pieces of invoice data; and

generating a price ratio model for each of a set of bins based on cleansed historical transaction records corresponding to that bin, each price ratio model defining price ratio as a function of one or more vehicle attributes in a set of vehicle attributes.

18. The system of claim 17, comprising code for:

obtaining a second set of historical transaction records from the first set of distributed sources; and

applying the first set of rules to the new historical transaction records to update the dealer quality score for each dealer in the set of dealers as a function of historical upfront prices offered for vehicles and actual prices at which the vehicles were sold to consumers.

19. The system of claim 17, comprising code for enhancing the historical transaction records with additional vehicle data collected from a second set of distributed sources by VIN.

20. The system of claim 19, comprising code for applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.