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Item discovery tools and methods for shopping in an electronic commerce environment

  • US 8,762,226 B2
  • Filed: 05/04/2011
  • Issued: 06/24/2014
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/04/2011
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A computer-implemented method performed on an e-commerce computer system, the method comprising:

  • identifying a plurality of tastemakers from a plurality of users of an e-commerce website, the plurality of tastemakers selected responsive to acts of;

    assigning, by the e-commerce computer system, a score to each of the plurality of users of the e-commerce website based upon an activity of the each of the plurality of users on the e-commerce website; and

    identifying as tastemakers a first group of the plurality of users who are assigned a higher score than a second group of the plurality of users;

    forming an association between a first user and a tastemaker by presenting an image survey to the first user, the image survey including;

    prompting, through a user interface of a user computing system, the first user to select a first image from a first group of images, each of the images in the first group of images representing one or more merchandise items, each of the images in the first group of images being stored in an image database of the e-commerce computer system and displayed to the first user through the user interface, each of the images in the first group of images representing an item identified as preferred by at least one tastemaker by a preferred item identification engine operating on the e-commerce computer system,prompting, through the user interface, the first user to select a second image from a second group of images, each of the images in the second group of images representing one or more merchandise items identified as preferred by a tastemaker who was also identified to prefer the merchandise item represented by the first image, each of the images in the second group of images being stored in the image database and displayed to the first user through the user interface, andreceiving, through a computer network, by the e-commerce computer system, an image selection of the first image and an image selection of the second image from the first user through the user interface;

    determining, by the e-commerce computer system, a shopping preference of the first user based, at least in part, on the association formed between the first user and the tastemaker, the shopping preference of the first user including information about the one or more merchandise items represented by the first image and the one or more merchandise items represented by the second image;

    identifying, by the e-commerce computer system, a second user having a shopping preference that is substantially similar to the shopping preference of the first user, the shopping preference of the second user including information, stored in a user preference database of the e-commerce computer system, about one or more preferred merchandise items of the second user;

    generating, by the e-commerce computer system, at least one shopping recommendation based on the shopping preference of the second user utilizing a recommendation engine of the e-commerce computer system; and

    presenting the at least one shopping recommendation to the first user through the user interface.

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