Marketing communication and transaction/distribution services platform for building and managing personalized customer relationships

• US 20070260521A1
• Filed: 12/04/2006
• Published: 11/08/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/04/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ramon Van Der Riet
• Original Assignee: Ramon Van Der Riet
• Inventors: Van Der Riet, Ramon
• Granted Patent: US 7,917,388 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.530
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0211 Determining the effectiveness of discounts or incentives
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0224 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0226 Incentive systems for frequent usage, e.g. frequent flyer miles programs or point systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0233 Method of redeeming a frequent usage reward
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0242 Determining effectiveness of advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

An interactive marketing communication and transaction services platform for managing personalized customer relationships. The platform facilitates communication and transactions between consumers, retailers and manufacturers, by helping suppliers customize product/service offerings, presentations and advertising messages to reflect individual consumers'"'"' needs, while providing portals with premium advertising messages for personal interactive info/news/entertainment services. The core of the platform consists of i) a central database system with ‘product/retail information’ and ‘holistic purchase-behavior specific consumer profiles’, generated by registering online product/retail information retrieved by consumers, as well as purchases made both on-line and in-store, using a loyalty card; ii) software applications, that create ‘market intelligence’ on manufacturer/retailer offers, consumer purchase needs, market performance of products/retailers and impact of brand/retailer presentations and ads on consumer purchase behavior; and iii) standard performance indicators, that make it possible to benchmark individual consumer communication programs against each other.

Claims

1. A process for improving communication effectiveness between manufacturers, retailers and individual consumers and making information exchange easier, comprising:

collecting data indicating shopping and purchase behavior history for a plurality of individual consumers, wherein said collecting of data indicating shopping behavior history is performed by parsing log files indicating information each consumer retrieves on-line with respect to products featured in a product presentation database and with respect to retailer categories featured in a retailer category presentation database coupled to a central web-services database system, and said collecting of data indicating purchase behavior history is performed by using benefit cards to capture on-line and in-store sales made to the consumers by a plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, wherein each of the plurality of individual consumers is provided with a benefit card that uniquely identifies an individual consumer and provides the individual consumer with an opportunity to earn points based on purchases made by the individual consumer of the products, said products being manufactured by a plurality of manufacturers and sold by the plurality of retailers at least some of which are independent of the manufacturers;

providing the individual consumers with access to ad-sponsored content that includes at least one from the group consisting of news, music, games, entertainment or shopping content, and wherein the ad-sponsored content is provided to each individual consumer in exchange for at least one of redemption of points earned by the consumer using the benefit card and access to the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of online and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and advertisement exposure history of the consumer;

collecting data indicating advertisement exposure history for each of the individual consumers by logging advertisements served to the consumer along with ad-sponsored content;

generating a consumer profile for each of the individual consumers from the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and data indicating advertisement exposure history collected for the consumer;

providing the product presentation database, coupled to the central web-services database system, that stores product presentation data for the products featured in the product presentation and retailer category presentation databases, wherein changes to product presentation data stored in the product presentation database are automatically reflected on one or more online retail storefronts;

storing, by a plurality of the manufacturers or by one or more of the retailers in the case of retailer branded private label products, product presentation data in the product presentation database;

providing the retailer category presentation database, coupled to the central web-services database system, that stores product category presentation data for the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, wherein at least one of the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database includes references to product presentation data stored by a plurality of the manufacturers in the product presentation database, and wherein changes to the product category presentation data stored in the category presentation database are automatically reflected on one or more of the online retail storefronts;

storing, by the one or more retailers, product category presentation data in the retailer category presentation database;

creating, by at least one retailer, an online retail storefront using information in the product presentation database and the category presentation database and consumer profiles of consumers visiting the online retail storefront;

providing the individual consumers with access to one or more online retailer storefronts;

serving one or more of the online retail storefronts to consumers based on the consumer profiles of the consumers, wherein the consumer profiles used for serving the online retail storefronts were generated from the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and data indicating advertisement exposure history collected for the consumers;

monitoring independently of the serving of the online retail storefronts with respect to at least one product, manufacturer, retailer category or retailer the shopping and online and in-store purchase behavior of consumers with a common consumer profile to whom a benefit card has been provided; and

wherein said shopping behavior of the consumers is monitored by parsing the log files indicating information each consumer retrieves on-line corresponding to products featured in the product presentation database and retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database coupled to the central web-services database system, and wherein the on-line and in-store purchase behavior of the consumers is monitored by using the benefit cards to capture on-line and in-store sales made to the consumers by a plurality of retailers;

calculating one or more overall effectiveness indicators for each of the products, manufacturers, retailer categories or retailers based on the monitored shopping and purchase behavior of consumers with a common consumer profile.

2-50. -50. (canceled)