System and method for calculating and displaying price distributions based on analysis of transactions

• US 10,489,810 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: Taira, Thomas, Painter, Scott, Taylor, Chris, Taylor, Robert, Swinson, Michael D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Palavecino, Kathleen
• Application Number:
  US16/277,553
• Publication Number:
  US 20190180306A1
• 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 systems and methods for the aggregation, analysis, display and monetization of pricing data for commodities in general, and which may be particularly useful applied to vehicles are disclosed. Specifically, in certain embodiments, historical transaction data associated with a particular vehicle configuration may be obtained and processed to determine pricing data associated with the vehicle configuration. The historical transaction data or determined pricing data may then be presented in an intuitive manner.

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 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;

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;

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;

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 comprising;

applying a first 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 second 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;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve with the relative prices ranges visually represented on the curve;

sending the HTML to the client computer.

2. The vehicle data system of claim 1, comprising code for generating the historical pricing data for the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin by removing incentives from transactions prices in the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

3. The vehicle data system of claim 2, wherein obtaining the dealer cost model for a particular manufacturer in the set of manufacturers comprises applying a set of equations to invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each of the set of equations defining holdback as a function of other invoice data, and selecting the equation that holds most consistently with the invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer as the dealer cost model for that particular manufacturer.

4. The vehicle data system of claim 3, 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.

5. The vehicle data system of claim 3, 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.

6. The vehicle data system of claim 1, comprising code for applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

7. The vehicle data system of claim 6, 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.

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;

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

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

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

communicating the responsive web page to the client computer.

9. The vehicle data system of claim 8, comprising code for generating historical pricing data for the set of historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin by removing incentives from transactions prices in the set of historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

10. The vehicle data system of claim 9, wherein generating the dealer cost model for a particular manufacturer in the set of manufacturers comprises applying a set of equations to invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each of the set of equations defining holdback as a function of other invoice data, and selecting the equation that holds most consistently with the invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer as the dealer cost model for that particular manufacturer.

11. The vehicle data 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 vehicle data 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 vehicle data system of claim 8, comprising code for applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

14. The vehicle data 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 data, the first of rules that define 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 historical records to adjust margins of one or more of the set of historical transaction records;

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 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;

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;

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;

generating HTML configured to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve with the relative prices ranges visually represented on the curve;

sending the HTML to the client computer in response to receiving the user-specified attributes.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising generating historical pricing data for the set of historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin by removing incentives from transactions prices in the set of historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein generating the dealer cost model for a particular manufacturer in the set of manufacturers comprises applying a set of equations to invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer, each of the set of equations defining holdback as a function of other invoice data, and selecting the equation that holds most consistently with the invoice data corresponding to that manufacturer as the dealer cost model for that particular manufacturer.

18. The system of claim 15, further comprising enhancing the historical transaction records with additional vehicle data collected from a second set of distributed sources by VIN.

19. The system of claim 18, further comprising applying a set of binning rules to select the enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected bin.

20. The system of claim 19, 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.