SERVICE METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING ONLINE INTEGRATED SHOPPING MALL

• US 20100100458A1
• Filed: 05/08/2007
• Published: 04/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yeong-Chun Kwon
• Original Assignee: Yeong-Chun Kwon
• Inventors: Kwon, Yeong-Chun
• Granted Patent: US 8,290,821 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/27
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0603 Catalogue ordering

Abstract

An online integrated shopping mall service apparatus and method is disclosed. The apparatus registers manufacturing/enterprises, SOHO distribution enterprises, and SOHO trade enterprises as enterprise members, provides the shopping mall with commodities, sells the commodities, and manages the sales record of the commodities. If a member is a shopping-mall founder, a sideline-person, a SOHO distribution enterprise, or a SOHO trade enterprise, the apparatus assigns a free retail-client shopping mall to the member, such that the member sells commodities at retail in the client shopping mall, performs the shopping mall management, registers commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the client shopping mall, and assigns lower client shopping malls to others. The apparatus assigns a specific administrator who satisfies a predetermined condition to a wholesale-qualified member capable of managing the wholesale shopping mall, assigns the wholesale shopping mall to the qualified member, and sells the commodities at wholesale.

Claims

1. A method for providing an online integrated shopping mall in an integrated shopping mall service apparatus connected to computer terminals over the Internet, comprising:

a) upon receiving a control signal from a shopping mall management server including a product-provider shopping mall manager, a retail shopping mall manager, and a wholesale shopping mall manager, managing a product-provider shopping mall manager by the product-provider shopping mall manager, managing a retail shopping mall by the retail shopping mall manager, managing a wholesale shopping mall by the wholesale shopping mall manager, in which the product-provider shopping mall, the retail shopping mall, and the wholesale shopping mall are managed by a plurality of sub-domains dependent-linked to a main domain of the integrated shopping mall;

b) providing an enterprise member with an independent management page via a main homepage of the main domain, such that the enterprise member is able to simultaneously manage commodities supplied to the integrated shopping mall via the main homepage of the main domain;

c) receiving a shopping-mall sale-in-lots request from a general member via the main homepage of the main domain, registering the general member as a regular member, assigning a client shopping mall acting as a retail shopping mall to the regular member free of charge such that the client shopping mall is managed as a sub-domain, and providing the regular member with a homepage of the client shopping mall and a client shopping mall administrator page;

d) assigning a wholesale shopping mall to a wholesale-qualified member from among several regular members as a sub-domain such that the wholesale-qualified member can manage the wholesale shopping mall as the sub-domain, and providing the wholesale-qualified member with a homepage and administrator page of the wholesale shopping mall; and

e) if any one of the regular member and the enterprise member requests to register his or her commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the shopping mall, exposing/displaying information of the commodities on any one of the main homepage, the homepages of the client shopping malls, and each client shopping mall'"'"'s homepage according to a predetermined product-registration request method, and managing the information of the commodities.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

upon receiving the shopping-mall sale-in-lots request from the general member, requesting the general member to enter a specific regular member who has previously received the shopping mall as a recommender;

if the general member enters the regular member as the recommender, assigning a retail client shopping mall to the general member, and registering the general member who has received the retail client shopping mall as a regular member; and

managing the regular member who has received the client shopping mall as a store member, and managing the regular member registered as the recommender as an agent member.

3. The method according to claim 2, further comprising:

selecting regular members whose the number of sale-in-lots shopping malls or the business record satisfies a predetermined rank condition, and managing the selected regular members as a plurality of level-agent members.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

if a visitor gains access to the client shopping mall via an advertisement banner of a portable site or an advertisement banner of the integrated shopping mall, matching client shopping mall ID information of an administrator of the advertisement banner with a terminal IP address of the visitor, and recording the matched result in a database; and

searching for client shopping mall ID information corresponding to the terminal IP address of the computer terminal in the database upon receiving a member registration request from the computer terminal, and entering the client shopping mall ID information in a recommender field of the member registration request.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the commodity-registration request step e) includes:

if a regular-member administrator or an enterprise-member administrator requests to register his or her commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the integrated shopping mall, performing image-processing of the requested commodities by a main administrator of the integrated shopping mall, and simultaneously displaying the image-processed commodities on the main homepage of the integrated shopping mall and homepages of all the sale-in-lots shopping malls, thereby performing a first warehouse-entry processing method;

if the regular-member administrator or the enterprise-member administrator directly requests to register his or her commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the integrated shopping mall, performing, by the regular-member administrator or the enterprise-member administrator, image-processing of the requested commodities via an administrator page, and simultaneously displaying the image-processed commodities on the main homepage of the integrated shopping mall and homepages of all the sale-in-lots shopping malls, thereby performing a second warehouse-entry processing method; and

if each regular-member administrator requests to register his or her commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the integrated shopping mall, performing, by the regular-member administrator, image-processing of the requested commodities via an administrator page, and displaying the image-processed commodities on homepages of his or her client shopping malls, thereby performing an individual-entry processing method.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the administrator page of the client shopping-mall administrator includes at least one of an administrator main-image management page, a direct-sale commodity management page, a design management page, a profit settlement page, and an advertisement banner code.

7. An online integrated shopping mall service apparatus connected to computer terminals over the Internet, in which a B2B (Business-to-Business) transaction, a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) transaction, and a B2B2C (Business-to-Business-to-Consumer) transaction are integrated and conducted at one place, comprising:

a main server for controlling operations of individual components of the online integrated shopping mall service apparatus;

a shopping-mall management server which includes a product-provider shopping mall manager, a retail shopping mall manager, and a wholesale shopping mall manager, receives a control signal from the main server, manages a product-provider shopping mall manager via the product-provider shopping mall manager, manages a retail shopping mall via the retail shopping mall manager, managing a wholesale shopping mall via the wholesale shopping mall manager, in which the product-provider shopping mall, the retail shopping mall, and the wholesale shopping mall are managed by a plurality of sub-domains dependent-linked to a main domain of the integrated shopping mall;

a database (DB) unit which includes a member database (DB), a commodity DB, an advertisement DB, an information-registration DB, and a settlement-management DB, and stores a variety of information associated with services of the online integrated shopping mall;

a database (DB) server for managing the individual DBs contained in the DB unit upon receiving a control signal from the main server;

a sale-in-lots management unit for receiving a shopping-mall sale-in-lots request from a general member via a main homepage of the main domain, registering the general member as a regular member in the member DB, and assigning a retail client shopping mall to the regular member free of charge via the retail shopping mall of the shopping mall management server, such that the retail client shopping mall is managed as a sub-domain; and

a commodity-entry and commodity-management server connected with the commodity DB of the DB unit and the shopping mall management server, if any one of the regular member acting as the client shopping mall administrator and the enterprise member acting as the product-provider shopping mall manager administrator requests to register his or her commodities as regular commodities to be sold in the integrated shopping mall, exposing/displaying information of the commodities on any one of the main homepage, the homepages of the client shopping malls, and each client shopping mall'"'"'s homepage according to a predetermined product-registration request method using the commodity DB and the shopping mall management server, and managing the information of the commodities using the commodity DB and the shopping mall management server.

8. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the member DB of the DB unit includes:

a general-member storage unit for storing information of general members;

a regular-member storage unit for storing information of regular-members of the retail shopping malls;

a wholesale shopping mall-qualified member storage unit for storing information of wholesale shopping mall-qualified members; and

an enterprise-member storage unit for storing information of enterprise-members who provide products or commodities.

9. The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein the regular-member storage unit includes:

a store-member who receives a free-of-charge client shopping mall, is able to sell commodities, is able to register the commodities in the integrated shopping mall, and is qualified to assign the client shopping mall;

an agent member who assigns the client shopping mall; and

a level-agent member who satisfies the number of assigned shopping malls (or sale-in-lots shopping malls) or predetermined business record matched with a predetermined rank condition.

10. The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein the enterprise-member storage unit stores a variety of enterprise members, for example, manufacturing- or distribution-companies, SOHO distribution enterprises, and SOHO trade enterprises (importer traders), in which the enterprise members are classified into general enterprise members indicating general-enterprise or association members who desire to provide the online integrated shopping mall with commodities, and affiliated-enterprise members indicating members of a manufacturing company, distribution company, and association, each of which has a sales team, and the general-enterprise members and the affiliated-enterprise members are stored in different places.

11. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the commodity DB of the DB unit includes:

a head-office commodity storage unit for storing information of commodities directly supplied from a system provision head office or information of contract-deposited commodities supplied from the system provision head office;

a first warehouse-entered commodity storage unit for storing information of commodities, which are deposited on a warehouse of the system provision head office, are image-processed by a system main-administrator, and are simultaneously displayed on all the client shopping malls as sales commodities;

a second warehouse-entered commodity storage unit for storing information of commodities, which are directly image-processed by a client administrator, and are simultaneously displayed on all the client shopping malls;

an individual-entry commodity storage unit for storing information of commodities, which are directly image-processed by an administrator who has received the client shopping mall, and are displayed on only the administrator'"'"'s client shopping mall as sales commodities; and

a wholesale shopping-mall commodity storage unit for storing information of wholesale-mall commodities displayed on the wholesale shopping mall.

12. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the commodity-entry and commodity-management server includes:

a head-office commodity-entry processor for registering head-office commodities to be stored in the head-office storage unit;

a first warehouse-entry processor for registering first warehouse-entry commodities to be stored in the first warehouse-entered commodity storage unit;

a second warehouse-entry processor for registering second warehouse-entry commodities to be stored in the second warehouse-entered commodity storage unit;

an individual-entry processor for registering individual-entry commodities to be stored in the individual-entry commodity storage unit;

a wholesale-entry processor for registering commodities to be stored in the wholesale shopping-mall commodity storage unit; and

a commodity-sales manager for conducting the sales of commodities, updating commodity information, and managing stocks.

13. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the DB unit further includes:

an initial-visitor recording DB which matches a terminal IP address of an initial visitor, who gains access to the client shopping mall via an advertisement banner, client shopping mall ID information of an administrator of an advertisement banner, and stores the matched result.

14. The apparatus according to claim 13, further comprising:

a banner-advertisement recommender management unit, if a user gains access to the homepage via his or her computer terminal and requests to register himself or herself as a member, which searches for client shopping mall ID information corresponding to an IP address of the computer terminal in the initial-visitor recording DB, and entering the client shopping mall ID information in a recommender field of a member registration request if the client shopping mall ID information is detected from the initial-visitor recording DB.