Targeting shoppers in an online shopping environment
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Accused Products
Abstract
Within an online shopping environment, a hosting server supports shoppers and merchants from whom the shoppers purchase goods or services. The hosting server enables an individual user to shop or browse the merchant sites and also enables a group of users to coordinate their shopping or browsing activities. A set of profiling tools build separate profiles based on individual and group shopper activity, as well as the interaction of an individual shopper with one or more groups of shoppers. A targeting tool uses the shopper profiles and information regarding previous promotions (if any) from a promotions library to make recommendations to individual shoppers and shopper groups based also on parameters specified by the merchant/s. The recommendations are directed to shoppers, in accordance with algorithms stored in a repository.
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Citations
84 Claims
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1-42. -42. (canceled)
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43. A method for targeting shoppers participating in online shopping with at least one merchant, said method comprising the steps of:
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collecting data regarding choices of individual shoppers when shopping individually;
collecting data regarding the choices of individual shoppers when participating in group shopping;
determining a shopper-group interaction measure from individual shopper data and group shopper data;
determining targeted information on a basis of said shopper-group interaction measure; and
sending said targeted information to one or more targeted shoppers. - View Dependent Claims (44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57)
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58. A method for targeting shoppers participating in online shopping with at least one merchant, said method comprising the steps of:
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collecting data regarding choices of individual shoppers when shopping individually;
determining an individual shopping behavior measure from the individual shopper data;
collecting data regarding the choices of individual shoppers when participating in group shopping;
determining a group shopping behavior measure from the group shopping data;
determining a shopper-group interaction measure from said individual shopper data and said group shopper data;
determining targeted information based on said individual shopping behavior measure, said group shopping behavior measure, and said shopper-group interaction measure; and
sending said targeted information to one or more targeted shoppers. - View Dependent Claims (59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67)
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68. An online shopping system comprising:
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a plurality of shopper terminals;
at least one merchant site; and
a shopping server system connected to said shopper terminals and said merchant sites by a communications link, and wherein said server system includes;
an input/output interface;
a memory unit operable for collecting and storing data via said input/output interface regarding choices of individual shoppers when shopping individually, and data regarding choices of individual shoppers when participating in group shopping;
a processor operable for determining a shopper-group interaction measure from the individual shopper data and the group shopper data, and determining targeting information based on of said shopper group interaction measure; and
wherein said input/output interface sends said targeted information to one or more targeted shoppers.
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69. An online shopping server for interacting with a plurality of shoppers and at least one merchant, comprising:
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an input/output interface;
a memory unit operable for collecting and storing data via said input/output interface regarding choices of individual shoppers when shopping individually, and data regarding the choices of individual shoppers when participating in group shopping;
a processor operable for determining a shopper-group interaction measure from the individual shopper data and the group shopper data, and determines targeting information on the basis of said shopper group interaction measure;
and wherein said input/output interface sends said targeted information to one or more targeted shoppers. - View Dependent Claims (70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83)
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84. A program storage device readable by computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform a method for targeting shoppers participating in online shopping with at least one merchant, said method comprising:
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collecting data regarding choices of individual shoppers when shopping individually;
collecting data regarding choices of individual shoppers when participating in group shopping;
determining a shopper-group interaction measure from the individual shopper data and said group shopper data;
determining targeted information based on said shopper-group interaction measure; and
sending said targeted information to one or more targeted shoppers.
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Specification