SERVICES FOR SPONTANEOUS COLLABORATION

• US 20100049581A1
• Filed: 08/19/2009
• Published: 02/25/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Pickover, Clifford A., Bantz, David Frederick
• Granted Patent: US 8,812,405 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/016 After-sales
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0273 Determination of fees for advertising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0281 Customer communication at a business location, e.g. providing product or service information, consulting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0283 Price estimation or determination
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0617 Representative agent
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing

Abstract

An apparatus for providing spontaneous collaboration between a shopper and consultants concerning a shopping goal derives information about the shopper'"'"'s physical or logical proximity to a particular product category, combined with the current contents of his or her shopping cart is used to determine one or more shopping goals; as well as information about each potential consultant, including physical proximity, willingness to consult, areas of expertise and recent experience is used to rank each consultant in terms of relevance to one or more shopping goal.

Claims

1. An apparatus for characterization of areas of consultant expertise of consultants, the apparatus comprising:

means for obtaining information on how recently a consultant purchased products of a given category, and how often the consultant purchased the products;

means for determining whether consultant advice given has been found by shoppers to be relevant and helpful in the past;

means for determining a willingness and capability of each consultant to give advice, based on physical proximity, current workload and explicitly stated desire; and

means for assigning a score to each consultant based on the information, willingness and capability.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising means for analyzing the information to determine whether necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful consultancy are met.

3. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing facilitation of collaboration, the computer readable program code means in said computer program product comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the functions of claim 1.