Facilitating Purchase of Excess Items

• US 20140278877A1
• Filed: 05/30/2014
• Published: 09/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/08/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Yanacek, David C., Lopez, Gustavo Eduardo, Rabuchin, Steven T., George, Michael M., Yarbrough, Brandon H.
• Application Number:
  US14/291,185
• Publication Number:
  US 20140278877A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.24
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0223 based on inventory
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0239 Online discounts or incentives
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute

Abstract

Disclosed are various embodiments for facilitating the purchase of excess items. In one embodiment, customer information and inventory data are retrieved from a merchant client. A determination is made on whether excess items exist. A list of target purchasers is generated based on data associated with a user account, and offers are generated and sent by electronic communication to the list of target purchasers.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying at least one program executable in a computing device, the at least one program comprising:

code that identifies a purchaser of a ticket for an event;

code that obtains a plurality of contacts associated with the purchaser, the plurality of contacts being obtained from a third party social networking site;

code that determines at least one target purchaser based at least in part on the plurality of contacts; and

code that transmits a respective offer to the at least one target purchaser, the offer being for purchasing from an excess supply of tickets associated with the event through an electronic commerce system.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the respective offer is presented to the at least one target purchaser via an advertisement embodied in a third party user interface.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the purchaser is a first purchaser of a plurality of purchasers that purchased at least one ticket for the event, and wherein the code that determines the at least one target purchaser is configured to remove duplicates between the plurality of contacts and the plurality of purchasers to determine the at least one target purchaser.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the code that determines the at least one target purchaser is further configured to determine the at least one target purchaser based at least in part on at least one of:

past purchase history, search queries, subscriptions, multimedia playlists, wish lists, or product views.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the respective offer includes a price for purchasing from the excess supply of tickets that is less than an amount paid by the purchaser for the ticket.

6. A method, comprising:

determining, by at least one computing device, a plurality of initial purchasers of an item;

obtaining, by the at least one computing device, a plurality of contacts associated with the plurality of initial purchasers, the plurality of contacts being obtained from a third party social networking site;

determining, by the at least one computing device, a plurality of target purchasers based at least in part on the plurality of contacts; and

generating, by the at least one computing device, an offer listing for purchasing from an excess inventory of the item.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein determining the plurality of target purchasers comprises removing, by the at least one computing device, duplicates between the plurality of contacts and the plurality of initial purchasers to determine the plurality of target purchasers.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein determining the plurality of target purchasers further comprises:

retrieving, by the at least one computing device, a set of criteria; and

determining, by the at least one computing device, the plurality of target purchasers based at least in part on the set of criteria;

wherein the set of criteria comprises at least one of;

past purchase history, search queries, subscriptions, multimedia playlists, wish lists, or product views.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the set of criteria is weighted according to purchases by the plurality of target purchasers of past offer listings.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the plurality of initial purchasers purchased the item at a first offer price, and the offer listing for purchasing from an excess of the item comprises a second offer price, the second offer price being a portion of the first offer price.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein the item relates to a ticket for an event.

12. The method of claim 6, further comprising providing, by the at least one computing device, the offer listing to the plurality of target purchasers.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the offer listing is provided to the plurality of target purchasers via an advertisement in a respective third party network page rendered on a client device associated with individual ones of the plurality of the target purchasers.

14. A system, comprising:

at least one computing device; and

an item recommendation application executable in the at least one computing device, the item recommendation application comprising;

logic that determines a purchaser of an item;

logic that obtains a plurality of contacts associated with the purchaser, the plurality of contacts obtained from a third party social networking site;

logic that determines a target purchaser for purchasing from an excess inventory of the item based at least in part on the plurality of contacts; and

logic that provides an offer listing to the target purchaser, the offer listing providing a recommendation referencing the excess inventory of the item.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the purchaser purchased the item at a first price, and the item recommendation application further comprises logic that determines a second price for purchasing from the excess inventory of the item according to demand for surplus of the item, the offer listing including the second price.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the purchaser is a first purchaser of a plurality of purchasers, and wherein the target purchaser is mutually exclusive of the plurality of purchasers.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the item comprises a ticket associated with an event.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the logic that determines the target purchaser for purchasing from an excess inventory of the item is further based at least in part on at least one of:

past purchase history, search queries, subscriptions, multimedia playlists, wish lists, product views, or data stored on the at least one computing device.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the logic that provides the offer listing to the at least one target purchaser is configured to provide the offer listing through at least one of:

a user interface, an electronic mail message, a text message, a quick response (QR) code, or an advertisement.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the advertisement is embodied in a third party user interface rendered on a client device associated with the target purchaser.