Intelligent agents for electronic commerce
First Claim
1. A method comprising:
- receiving one or more actual offerings for a product or service and one or more hypothetical offerings for a product or service from one or more providers;
receiving one or more inquiries from one or more consumers, each inquiry relating to a specified type of offering;
for each of the inquiries, identifying the offerings that match that inquiry;
for each of the inquiries, supplying the associated consumer with information that is a function of the actual offerings determined to match that inquiry, without regard to the hypothetical offerings determined to match that inquiry; and
for each hypothetical offering, supplying the associated provider with information that is a function of the inquiries determined to match that hypothetical offering.
10 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system for electronic commerce (10) having personal agents (12 and 13) that represent consumers and providers in a virtual marketplace (28). Consumer personal agents conceal the identity of the consumer and are capable of creating decision agents (14) that shop for products and assist consumers in comparing and ranking products. Provider personal agents are capable of creating demand agents (16) that quantify demand and target specific consumers without learning the identity of the consumers. Based on data generated by the activities of the decision agents and on preference data maintained by consumer personal agents, provider personal agents can quantify current, historical, and future demand, simulate demand, and target specific consumers for advertising and other messages. Provider personal agents can cooperate with consumer personal agents to collect data about reasons for sales and lost sales and to offer consideration payments to consumers. Consumer personal agents can automatically reject unsolicited messages that do not satisfy the consumer'"'"'s preferences.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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receiving one or more actual offerings for a product or service and one or more hypothetical offerings for a product or service from one or more providers; receiving one or more inquiries from one or more consumers, each inquiry relating to a specified type of offering; for each of the inquiries, identifying the offerings that match that inquiry; for each of the inquiries, supplying the associated consumer with information that is a function of the actual offerings determined to match that inquiry, without regard to the hypothetical offerings determined to match that inquiry; and for each hypothetical offering, supplying the associated provider with information that is a function of the inquiries determined to match that hypothetical offering. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A computer-readable medium encoded with logic operable, when executed by a computer processor, to perform the steps comprising:
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receiving one or more actual offerings for a product or service and one or more hypothetical offerings for a product or service from one or more providers; receiving one or more inquires from one or more consumers, each inquiry relating to a specified type of offering; for each of the inquiries, identifying the offerings that match that inquiry; for each of the inquiries, supplying the associated consumer with information that is a function of the actual offerings determined to match that inquiry, without regard to the hypothetical offerings determined to match that inquiry; and for each hypothetical offering, supplying the associated provider with information that is a function of the inquiries determined to match that hypothetical offering. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification