POPULATING AN E-COMMERCE SHOPPING CART AND OTHER E-COMMERCE FIELDS BASED UPON CONTENT EXTRACTED FROM NATURAL LANGUAGE INPUT

• US 20080189187A1
• Filed: 02/01/2007
• Published: 08/07/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: HAO, Biao, MATHAI, Shiju
• Granted Patent: US 8,078,502 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0613 Third-party assisted
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

The present invention can include an e-commerce shopping method that includes a step of receiving shopper free form input representing a shopping request. A software program can extract semantics from the shopper free form input relating to at least one item available for sale. At least one item can be automatically added to an electronic shopping cart based upon the extracted semantics. A shopper can be permitted to check-out shopping cart items and/or to edit items, item details, and desired quantities contained in the shopping cart.

Claims

1. An e-commerce shopping method comprising:

receiving shopper free form input representing a shopping request;

a software program extracting semantics from the shopper free form input relating to at least one item available for sale;

automatically adding at least one item to an electronic shopping cart based upon the extracted semantics; and

providing an ability to a corresponding shopper to automatically purchase the items contained in the electronic shopping cart.

2. The method of claim 1, the extracting step further comprising:

during the extracting step, ascertaining an ambiguity regarding a plurality of possible items to which a portion of the free form input refers; and

resolving the ambiguity in favor of one of the possible items based upon previously stored data contained in a machine readable media relating to the shopper, wherein the previously stored data includes at least one of shopper purchase history data and shopper preference data, wherein the at least one added item includes the favored item of the resolving step.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

during the extracting step, ascertaining an ambiguity regarding a plurality of possible items to which a portion of the free form input refers;

narrowing possible interpretations for the ambiguity to a set of likely meanings; and

presenting a set of shopper selectable options for resolving the ambiguity, wherein said set of options is based on results of the narrowing step.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps of method 1 are performed during a real-time interactive communication session between a shopper and an automated commerce system.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

presenting the electronic shopping cart items for shopper confirmation;

providing at least one option for the corresponding shopper to edit presented shopping cart item information;

receiving a user selected response to check out items in the electronic shopping cart; and

finalizing an electronic commerce transaction during check out to finalize the shopper purchase of the check out items.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the real-time interactive communication session is at least one of an online Web based shopping session, an interactive voice responsive session, and a text-exchange session.

7. The method claim 1, wherein the received free form input is provided within a least one of an e-mail message and a fax message.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the free form input is speech input in a natural language format.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the free form input is text input in a natural language format.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein said steps of claim 1 are steps preformed automatically by at least one machine in accordance with at least one computer program having a plurality of code sections that are executable by the at least one machine.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps of claim 1 are performed by at least one of a service agent and a computing device manipulated by the service agent, the steps being performed in response to a service request.

12. A system for conducting electronic commerce comprising:

an e-commerce server configured to receive shopper input, to conduct an e-commerce transaction based upon this input, wherein during the e-commerce transaction a shopper purchases at least one available item;

an input processing system configured to receive free form shopper input and semantically interpret the free form shopper input into discrete data fields relevant for the e-commerce transaction; and

a merchandise data store configured to record a set of items available for purchase, wherein at least a portion of the discrete data fields identify shopper desired ones of the set of items.

13. The system of claim 12 further comprising:

a disambiguation engine configured to resolve ambiguities detected by the input processing system when converting content contained in the free form shopper input to information placed in the discrete data fields; and

a shopper data store configured to store and index shopper specific information that includes information relating to shopper preferences and purchase history, wherein the disambiguation engine utilizes data stored in the shopper data store to resolve ambiguities.

14. The system of claim 12, further comprising:

a natural language understanding engine configured to convert free form shopper input into data into discrete units of information that are associated with the e-commerce transaction.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the shopper free form input is contained within shopper provided utterances, said system further comprising:

a speech recognition engine configured to convert the shopper provided utterances into text, which is further processed by the natural language understanding engine.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the shopper free form input is contained within an image file, said system further comprising:

an optional character recognition engine configured to extract text from the image file, which is further processed by the natural language understanding engine.

17. A shopper facing e-commerce interface comprising:

a natural language input element through which a shopper is able to input information in a natural language format;

a shopping cart configured to present a plurality of items specified by the shopper for shopper purchase, wherein the presented items are determined from input provided via the natural language input element; and

at least one shopping interactive option configured to be selected by a user, wherein a selection of the shopping interactive option results in at least one of a change in the items presented in the shopping cart and a finalization of an e-commerce transaction involving a purchase of the items presented in the shopping cart.

18. The interface of claim 17, further comprising:

a shopper profile editing interface configured to permit a shopper to configure item purchasing preferences, which are used by a natural language processing system to resolve ambiguities detected in the input information when the natural language processing system semantically interprets the input information into discrete data elements specific to at least one of the presented items.

19. The interface of claim 17, wherein the interface is a Web based interface accessible via a browser having a graphical user interface (GUI), wherein the natural language input element, the shopping interactive option, and the shopping cart are represented by GUI elements.

20. The interface of claim 17, wherein the interface is a voice only interface for interacting with an automated voice response system over a real-time communication channel.