ENGAGING RETAIL CUSTOMERS OVER COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

• US 20160117687A1
• Filed: 10/22/2014
• Published: 04/28/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Walmart Apollo, LLC (WalMart Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Wal-Mart Stores Texas LLC (WalMart Inc.)
• Inventors: Nagarathinam, Arun Prasad
• Granted Patent: US 11,373,197 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0267 Wireless devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

A historical-data module may retrieve historical prices and/or sales numbers for products at a presently-relevant, historical reference time and at other times in an interval encompassing the reference time. A comparison module may generate relative price values and/or sales-number values by comparing prices and/or sales numbers at the reference time to those at other times in the interval for various products. A selection module may select a subset of products with a favorable weighted combination of relative price values and/or sales-number values for a product report presented over a communication network, potentially with a graph of historical prices for the products. Information about a viewer of the product report may further tailor the report. Viewer information may include signals of product interest identified in social-networking posts by natural language processing, viewer search and/or purchase data, the viewer'"'"'s relations in a social graph of a social networking platform, and/or geo-targeting.

Claims

1. A system for identifying seasonally low prices, the system comprising:

a historical-data module operable to retrieve, from a database, historical data comprising historical prices for a pricing set of products offered for sale by a retailer; and

a subset-identification module operable to;

compare historical prices for products in the pricing set at a presently relatable time to historical prices for the products in the pricing across a time interval; and

identify a subset of products for which historical prices at the presently relatable time are comparatively low in relation to other historical prices across the time interval and relative to other products in the pricing set; and

a presentation module operable to format information about the subset of products for display over a communication network.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the historical data further comprises historical sales-volume data, from the retailer;

the subset-identification module further operable to compare historical sales-volume data for products in a sales set at the presently relatable time to historical sales-volume data for the sales set across the time interval, the sales set including products in the pricing set and being one of larger than, smaller than, and coterminous with the pricing set in terms of products; and

the subset-identification module is further operable to identify the subset of products with, at the presently relatable time, a combination of comparatively high sales-volume and comparatively low prices in relation to other historical sales-volume data and prices across the time interval and relative to other products in at least one of the pricing set and the sales set.

3. The system of claim 2, further comprising a graph module in the presentation module and operable to plot a graph of historical prices over the predetermined time interval for a product in the subset of products for presentation with the information about the product.

4. The system of claim 2, further comprising:

a user-information module operable to retrieve information about a user, the user having a potential to access the subset of products over the communication network; and

wherein

the subset-identification module is further operable to tailor the subset of products to the user with the information about the user by at least one of;

instructing the historical-data module to retrieve historical data for a product suggested by the information about the user as a product of interest to the user;

generating interest scores by applying the information about the user to a set of products and selecting products with a favorable, combined, weighted value derived from weighted values for price and sales volume and an interest score; and

altering the subset by at least one of removing a product inconsistent with the information about the user and adding a product with a favorable interest score.

5. The system of claim 4, further comprising a product-signal module within the user-information module, the product-signal module operable to:

retrieve recent posts from a social-networking account of the user;

identify product signals indexed to individual products in the posts by matching at least one of key-word sets and key-word patterns to the posts; and

report the identified product signals in the information about the user.

6. The system of claim 4, further comprising a social-graph module within the user-information module and operable to:

access an Application Programming Interface (API) for a social graph generated by a social networking platform and identify relationships between the user and other elements in the social graph; and

generate information about the user based on the user'"'"'s relationship to the other elements in the social graph.

7. The system of claim 4, wherein a user-information module is further operable to retrieve the information about the user by accessing information about at least one of the user'"'"'s purchasing patterns and the user'"'"'s searches from a database.

8. The system of claim 2, further comprising a margin module operable to:

retrieve profit-margin data from a database for products in at least one of the pricing set of products and the sales set of products;

identify a profit margin for the products for which the profit-margin data is retrieved; and

wherein;

the subset-identification module is further operable to identify the subset of products with a combination of a comparatively high profit margin relative to other products and, at the presently relatable time, comparatively high historical sales-volumes and comparatively low historical prices in relation to other historical sales-volumes and other historical prices across the time interval relative to the other products.

9. The system of claim 2, wherein the historical data module, the subset-identification module, and the presentation module are operable to periodically update the subset of products and to format the information about the subset of products for display over the communication network to increase traffic to the retailer.

10. A system for promoting products with prices at potential lows, comprising:

a database maintained by a retailer and storing historical data on prices and sales numbers for products offered by the retailer, the historical data indexed to historical times;

a retrieval module operable to retrieve historical data on prices and sales numbers for a historical-reference time analogous to a present time relative to a cyclical time span, an instance of the cyclical time span encompassing the present time and a set of historical times within a historical instance of the cyclical time span traversing the historical-reference time;

a comparison module operable to compare prices and sales numbers at the historical-reference time to prices and sales numbers from the set of historical times; and

a selection module operable to select products for presentation based on at least one of relatively low prices and relatively high sales numbers at the historical-reference time in relation to prices and sales numbers from the set of historical times relative to other products.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein:

the retrieval module is operable to retrieve historical data limited to a first category being one of prices and sales numbers for an initial set of products;

the selection module is operable to create a narrowed set of products from the initial set based on one of relatively low prices and relatively high sales numbers for the first category;

the retrieval module is operable to next retrieve historical data limited to a remaining category of one of prices and sales numbers for the narrowed set of products; and

the selection module is operable to create a selected set of products from the narrowed set based on one of relatively low prices and relatively high sales numbers for the remaining category.

12. The system of claim 10, further comprising a presentation module operable to display the set of products within a product-presentation application developed for a social networking platform.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising a user-information module operable to:

access posts by the user on the social networking platform;

search the posts for product signals comprising at least one of key-word sets and key-word patterns indexed to individual products; and

generate an interest score for a product by a weighted combination of at least one product signal indexed to the product.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the selection module is further operable to select products for a presentation set based on a weighted comparison of interest scores and at least one of relatively low prices and relatively high sales numbers at the historical-reference time relative to prices and sales numbers from the set of historical times for products offered by the retailer.

15. The system of claim 10, further comprising a geo-targeting module operable to determine a location of the user by at least one geo-tracking method;

and wherein;

the database further indexes the historical data to geographic regions; and

the retrieval module is operable to retrieve historical data limited to a region including the location of the user, as provided by the geo-targeting module.

16. A method for reporting products at potential periodic low prices, comprising:

identifying a reference time and a time span that are relevant to a present time;

retrieving historical data from a database, the historical data comprising at least one of prices and sales data for at least one set of products offered by a retailer;

creating at a historical-price metric and a sales-volume metric for individual products by comparing at least one of prices and sales data for the reference time to at least one of corresponding prices and sales data for the span of time for the individual products in the at least one set of products;

selecting a presentation set of products from the at least one set of products based on a weighted combination of factors, the factors comprising historical-price metrics and high-sales-volume metrics; and

presenting the presentation set of products for display over a communication network.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

applying a natural language processing algorithm to posts on a social networking platform to derive a product signal indicative of a presence of a poster of the posts in a market for a product corresponding to the product signal, the poster corresponding to a potential viewer of the presentation set;

maintaining the product signal indexed to the potential viewer in a database;

applying the product signal as a weighted factor in the weighted combination of factors to select the presentation set.

18. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

maintaining a database with information about potential viewers of the presentation set of products; and

limiting products for which historical data is retrieved based on information about a potential viewer accessing the presentation set of products over the communication network.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising plotting a graph of historical prices of a product in the presentation set of products for presentation with the product during presentation of the presentation set of products over the communications network.

20. The method of claim 16, further comprising providing a social-networking button during presentation of the presentation set, the social-networking button operable to post information about the presentation set on an account of a user viewing the presentation set, the account maintained by a social networking platform.