MERCHANDISING ITEMS OF TOPICAL INTEREST

• US 20090030803A1
• Filed: 07/25/2007
• Published: 01/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Mohan, Sunil
• Granted Patent: US 7,979,321 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

Various embodiments are described herein that provide one or more of a systems, methods, software, and data structures within an Internet marketp lace context that are useful to promote products that may be associated with an event occurrence. Some embodiments further utilize collaborative filtering to augment event-based product recommendations.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium, with instructions thereon, which when executed, cause a suitably configured computing system to:

receive a product listing request;

identify at least one product related to an event occurrence; and

respond to the product listing request with a product listing including the at least one identified product.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein receiving a product listing request includes receiving a request for a web page from an Internet-based marketplace.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the product listing request includes a request for products within at least one product category.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 1, with further instructions thereon, which when executed, cause the suitable configured computing system to identify event occurrences by:

receiving event data from a remote source;

process the event data in view of event watch rules including key words and threshold limits, which when achieved indicate occurrence of an event related to a respective watch rule; and

store an indication of each identified event occurrence and a date the respective event is identified.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein the remote source is a news organization.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 5, wherein receiving event data from the news organization includes receiving at least partial data of new stories into a database of the computing system.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein the instructions to identify at least one product related to an event occurrence, when executed, further cause the suitably configured computing system to:

apply a product association rule of a watch rule for which an event is identified.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 7, wherein a product association rule associates an identified event occurrence with one or both of one or more products and one or more product categories.

9. A method comprising:

receiving an indication of an event occurrence;

storing a representation of the event occurrence in a database including a date of the event occurrence;

associating the event occurrence with one or more products represented in a product database; and

recommending at least one of the one or more products associated with the event occurrence to a prospective purchaser within a period following the date of the event occurrence.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein associating the event occurrence with one or more products represented in the product database includes associating the event occurrence with at least one category of products represented in the product database.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein receiving an indication of an event occurrence includes:

receiving event data from a remote source;

processing the event data in view of watch data stored in a watch rule database to identify watch data within the event data;

applying a rule associated with watch data identified within the event data to associate the event data to product data stored in the product database.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein apply the rule associated with the watch data identified within the event data includes apply a rule to associate the event data to a category of products stored in the product database.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein:

receiving event data from a remote source includes executing a trawling process that retrieves web pages from one or more web sites; and

processing the event data in view of watch data stored in the watch rule data base includes identifying text in retrieved web pages included in one or more watch data rules stored in the watch rule database.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein recommending at least one of the one or more products associated with the event occurrence to a prospective purchaser within a period following the date of the event occurrence includes:

identifying and ranking products or product categories the prospective purchaser is likely to be interested in utilizing collaborative filtering;

modifying the ranking of products or product categories the prospective purchaser is likely to be interested in as a function of at least one event occurrence associated with at least one identified product or product category.

15. A system comprising:

an event database including event data records;

a product database including product records and product category records;

an event-product merchandising module providing event-product merchandising services including at least one service that, in response to a request, returns one or both of one or more product listings and product categories as a function of an event record in the event database that is related to the returned product listings and product categories.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

an entity database including entity records; and

an event identification module including one or more processes to;

identify relationships between entity records of the entity database and event records of the event database; and

provide a representation of the identified relationships to the event-product merchandising module.

17. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

an event-product identification module operative to;

receive input creating relationships between an event record of the event database and one or both of products and product categories; and

provide a representation of created relationships to the event-product merchandising module.

18. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

a product retrieval module to;

retrieve product listings and categories of product listings directly from the product database and through the event-product merchandising module in response to a user level request; and

retrieve event data from event records of the event database as a function of one or more retrieved product listings and categories of product listings.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the event data retrieved by the product retrieval module includes at least a headline of a news story and a hyperlink to a full-text version of the news story.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the event-product merchandising module further includes an event news story service that returns at least a hyperlink if included in an event record in the event database that is related to the returned product listings and product categories.