METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING PREDETERMINED PROMOTIONAL OFFERS
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Accused Products
Abstract
Embodiments provide methods, apparatus, systems, and computer readable media associated with provisioning of promotional offers from merchants to consumers. Merchants may submit schedules to a promotional offer provision service. The schedules may describe promotional offers which are usable during specific pre-determined time periods. The schedules may also describe other aspects of the promotional offers, such as type of offer or discount, and may include restrictions, such as restrictions based on a consumer'"'"'s history of follow-through. Consumers may search the system, such as through a website, for offers of interest. Consumers may search based on criteria such as time and location. If the consumer accepts the offer, he or she may be provided a coupon with a unique code for presentation to the merchant. The consumer may also negotiate terms of the promotional offer, if desired. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.
121 Citations
86 Claims
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1-36. -36. (canceled)
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37. A computer-implemented method for providing promotional offers to consumers, the method comprising:
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receiving, by a computing device, a request from a user to view promotional offers; selecting, by the computing device, one or more promotional offers out of a plurality of known promotional offers as relevant to present to the user, based at least in part on a location associated with the user; and facilitating, by the computing device, display of the one or more selected promotional offers to the user. - View Dependent Claims (38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58)
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59. A computer-implemented method for providing promotional offers to consumers, the method comprising:
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receiving, by a computing device, a description of a promotional offer from a merchant, the description specifying a time period of a day during which the promotional offer may be used by consumers; selecting, by the computing device, the promotional offer out of a plurality of received promotional offers as relevant to present to a consumer, based at least in part on a time the consumer has indicated; and displaying, by the computing device, the promotional offer to the consumer. - View Dependent Claims (60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71)
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72. A system for providing promotional offers to consumers, the system comprising:
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one or more computer processors; a schedule storage coupled to the processors, and configured to store a schedule describing one or more promotional offers for one or more merchants, the schedule including times of day when the promotional offers may be used; a schedule input module, configured, in response to operation by the one or more processors, to receive from a merchant a schedule describing one or more promotional offers; and a display module, configured, in response to operation by the one or more processors, to; select, out of the one or more promotional offers described in the schedule store, relevant promotional offers for display to a consumer based at least in part on a time the consumer has indicated; and display the relevant promotional offers to the consumer. - View Dependent Claims (73, 74, 75, 76, 77)
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78. An article of manufacture, comprising:
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a tangible computer-readable medium; and a plurality of computer-executable instructions stored on the tangible computer-readable medium, wherein the computer-executable instructions, in response to execution by an computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations for providing promotional offers to consumers, the operations including; receiving a schedule describing a promotional offer from a merchant, the schedule specifying a time period of a day during which the promotional offer may be used by consumers; selecting the promotional offer out of a plurality of promotional offers as relevant to present to the consumer based at least in part on information in the schedule, based at least in part on a time the consumer has indicated; and displaying the promotional offer to a consumer. - View Dependent Claims (79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86)
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Specification