Online ordering system and method

• US 20130024291A1
• Filed: 09/24/2012
• Published: 01/24/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Zanni Assets Limited Liability Company (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Inventors: Tarvydas, Martin, Licardi, Courtney Ann, Aliabadi, Amir, Hammond, Jeffrey T., Sutton, Becky, Frangos, Anargiros Zacharias, Dalton, Noreen
• Granted Patent: US 8,577,749 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.66
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/04 Forecasting or optimisation specially adapted for administrative or management purposes, e.g. linear programming or "cutting stock problem" market predictions or forecasting for commercial activities G06Q30/0202
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/047 Optimisation of routes or paths, e.g. travelling salesman problem
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/12 specially adapted for electronic shopping systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0234 Rebates after completed purchase
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0283 Price estimation or determination
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0603 Catalogue ordering
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0605 Supply or demand aggregation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0621 Item configuration or customization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0625 Directed, with specific intent or strategy
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0643 Graphical representation of items or shoppers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/06 : Energy or water supply
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/40 : Business processes related to the transportation industry shipping G06Q10/083
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/50 : Business processes related to the communications industry metering or billing arrangements H04L12/14; telephonic communication involving automatic or semi-automatic exchanges H04M3/00; arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication H04M15/00; prepayment telephone systems H04M17/00; accounting or billing for wireless communication networks H04W4/24

Abstract

Systems and methods for facilitating an on-line purchase of at least one item on behalf of a consumer are disclosed. A consumer may shop and purchase at least one item on a consolidated shopping (CS) website displaying one or more items available for purchase on one or more different merchant websites. The CS website provides consumers with advanced searching that takes into consideration a personal profile of the consumer, the consumer'"'"'s previous shopping history, transactional data relating to a group of similar consumers, and the like. A host computer providing the CS website may access a merchant website selling the requested item, and order the requested item on behalf of the consumer, and charging a transaction fee, listing fee, receiving a rebate and/or offering a rebate for performing such. One embodiment allows a consumer to purchase/order multiple items from multiple websites in a single purchase request to the CS website.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining whether a selected product is from an affiliated webpage or an unaffiliated webpage;

transmitting an order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an affiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the affiliated webpage; and

injecting, by a computer-based system, the order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an unaffiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the unaffiliated webpage.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the computer-based system, whether a payment method is accepted by more than one of a plurality of merchants.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising searching a local database to locate product information prior to searching websites for the product information.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the websites include a plurality of at least one of:

affiliated websites and unaffiliated websites.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying the information from at least one of the local database and the websites within the web page comprises a consistent user interface.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the searching is-based upon user data and at least one of:

an item description and a category description.

7. The method of claim 4, further comprising performing an analysis of the user data to determine item category preferences of the user.

8. The method of claim 4, further comprising performing an analysis of the user data of a subset of users to determine item categories that are searched most frequently.

9. The method of claim 3, further comprising identifying products that were previously selected for purchase when no purchase occurred.

10. The method of claim 4, further comprising retrieving an offer based on the user data.

11. The method of claim 3, further comprising determining a product category corresponding to the product information, wherein the product category is used to locate information relating to a plurality products relating to the product information.

12. The method of claim 3, further comprising retrieving a subset of products relating to a product category relating to the product information.

13. The method of claim 5, further comprising transmitting browser executable code to a browser application of a user, wherein the browser executable code tracks interaction between the user and the consistent user interface to provide a search suggestion to the user.

14. The method of claim 4, wherein the user data includes at least one of:

a user profile, shopping habits, transaction history, and search preferences.

15. The method of claim 3, further comprising unbundling a bundled product, wherein the unbundling creates a plurality of individual products.

16. The method of claim 13, further comprising receiving unbundling rules from a subset of the plurality of merchants.

17. The method of claim 3, further comprising associating a user with a specialized status, wherein the user is provided a subset of the product information based on the specialized status.

18. The method of claim 3, further comprising providing a user with a personalization interface, wherein the personalization interface includes controls for configuring at least one of:

text, graphic, color, and configuration for a product selected from the product information.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the personalization interface provides a rendering of the product selected from the product information based on the configuring.

20. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, by the computer-based system, a search term.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising generating at least one suggestion related to the search term, by the computer-based system, based on the search term in combination with at least one of historical transaction data and consumer profile information.

22. A system comprising:

a processor;

a tangible, non-transitory memory configured to communicate with the processor,

the tangible, non-transitory memory having instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising;

determining whether a selected product is from an affiliated webpage or an unaffiliated webpage;

transmitting an order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an affiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the affiliated webpage; and

injecting, by the processor, the order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an unaffiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the unaffiliated webpage.

23. An article of manufacture including a non-transitory, tangible computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by a computer-based system, cause the computer-based system to perform operations comprising:

determining whether a selected product is from an affiliated webpage or an unaffiliated webpage;

transmitting an order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an affiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the affiliated webpage; and

injecting, by the computer-based system, the order associated with the selected product to a processor associated with an unaffiliated merchant, in response to the selected product being from the unaffiliated webpage.