METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR DEVELOPING MARKET INTELLIGENCE

• US 20070124159A1
• Filed: 09/25/2006
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Western Union
• Original Assignee: First Data Corporation (Fiserv Incorporated)
• Inventors: Moore, Raymond
• Granted Patent: US 7,921,118 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 Strategic management or analysis, e.g. setting a goal or target of an organisation; Planning actions based on goals; Analysis or evaluation of effectiveness of goals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided for characterizing market distribution for a business having multiple business representatives. The business is considered to be in competition with one or more competitors, each of which also has multiple representatives. Locations are determined both for the business representatives and for the competitor representatives, and these locations are used to populate one or more databases. A locator identification is assigned to each distinct location and used as a pointer within the databases. The locator identification may be unique to specific street addresses, permitting improved analysis of the market information, particularly analysis derived from the geographical distributions of the business representatives and of the competitor representatives.

Claims

1. A method for characterizing market distribution for a business, the method comprising:

maintaining records on a storage device defining locations for each of a plurality of business representatives comprised by the business and situated at different geographical locations to provide sales of the business'"'"'s products and defining locations for each of a plurality of competitor representatives comprised by one or more competitors to the business and situated at different geographical locations to provide sales of competitor products;

quantifying a level of competition between the business and the competitors in terms of a distance measure between the business and competitor representatives calculated from the records maintained on the storage device; and

correlating the quantified level of competition with demographic data.

2. The method recited in claim 1 wherein the demographic data comprise census data.

3. The method recited in claim 1 further comprising applying a filter criterion to the correlated data to characterize geographic divisions within the demographic data by market penetration.

4. The method recited in claim 3 further comprising displaying at least some of the locations of the business representatives and at least some of the locations of the competitor representatives graphically according to the geographic divisions, wherein the geographic divisions are distinctly displayed according to the filter criterion.

5. The method recited in claim 1 further comprising displaying the locations of at least some of the business representatives and the locations of at least some of the competitor representatives graphically.

6. The method recited in claim 5 wherein displaying the locations of the at least some of the business representatives and the locations of the at least some of the competitor representatives comprises displaying the locations of the at least some of the business representatives and the locations of the at least some of the competitor representatives on a map.

7. The method recited in claim 5 further comprising:

maintaining records on the storage device defining product information for each of the plurality of business representatives and for each of the plurality of competitor representatives; and

displaying the product information for the at least some of the business representatives and the at least some of the competitor representatives.

8. The method recited in claim 1 further comprising maintaining records on the storage device defining product information for each of the plurality of business representatives and for each of the plurality of competitor representatives.

9. A method for characterizing market distribution for a business, the method comprising:

maintaining records on a storage device defining locations for each of a plurality of business representatives comprised by the business and situated at different geographical locations to provide sales of the business'"'"'s products;

accessing a representative-locator service on an internet web site for a competitor to the business to identify locations for each of a plurality of competitor representatives; and

quantifying a level of competition between the business and the competitors in terms of a distance measure between the business and competitor representatives calculated from the records maintained on the storage device and the identified locations for each of the plurality of competitor representatives.

10. The method recited in claim 9 wherein accessing the representative-locator service on the internet web site for the competitor to the business comprises operating a web robot to automatically access the representative-locator service.

11. The method recited in claim 9 further comprising correlating the quantified level of competition with demographic data.

12. The method recited in claim 11 further comprising applying a filter criterion to the correlated data to characterize geographic divisions within the demographic data by market penetration.

13. The method recited in claim 12 further comprising displaying at least some of the locations of the business representatives and at least some of the locations of the competitor representatives graphically according to the geographic divisions, wherein the geographic divisions are distinctly displayed according to the filter criterion.

14. The method recited in claim 9 further comprising displaying the locations of at least some of the business representatives and the locations of at least some of the competitor representatives graphically.

15. The method recited in claim 14 further comprising:

maintaining records on the storage device defining product information for each of the plurality of business representatives;

determining product information for each of the plurality of competitor representatives from the representative-locator service; and

displaying the product information for the at least some of the business representatives and the at least some of the competitor representatives.

16. The method recited in claim 9 further comprising:

maintaining records on the storage device defining product information for each of the plurality of business representatives; and

determining product information for each of the plurality of competitor representatives from the representative-locator service.