Automated listing management

• US 20050033648A1
• Filed: 07/22/2002
• Published: 02/10/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 07/20/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Ackley, Matthew, Jin, Hua-Ming, Lin, Ken
• Granted Patent: US 7,883,002 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/10 Services

Abstract

Disclosed is a sales system for lots of items that includes business rule definition logic. The sales system also includes offering creation logic that is operative to dynamically create different offerings for items in the lots. The offering creation logic optimizes return based on one or more of the business rules by using different offering parameter values for the different offerings.

Claims

1. A sales system for lots of items, comprising:

business rule definition logic,

offering creation logic responsive to the business rule definition logic and operative to dynamically create a plurality of different offerings for items in the lots, and wherein the offering creation logic is operative to optimize return based on one or more business rules from the business rule definition logic by using different offering parameter values for the different offerings.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rule definition logic is operative to define rules based on a target cost recovery rate.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rule definition logic is responsive to user business rule creation commands.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the offering creation logic is operative to optimize return by adjusting lot price.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the offering creation logic is operative to optimize return by adjusting lot quantity.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the offering creation logic is operative to create offerings for a plurality of sales channels.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the offering creation logic is operative to adjust offerings on one of the sales channels based on results from another of the sales channels.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rule definition logic is operative to create rules that are dependent on results from prior offerings.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the business rule definition logic is operative to create rules that are dependent on margins from prior offerings.

10. The system of claim 8 wherein the price offering creation logic is operative to create a series of auctions based on parameters determined by results from previous auctions.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rule definition logic is operative to create offerings based on absolute or relative amounts.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rule definition logic employs a web-based interface.

13. The system of claim 1 wherein the business rules can be set on a SKU, category, and site level.

14. The system of claim 1 further including default sales parameter creation logic operative to set sales parameters for the offerings.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the sales parameter creation logic is operative to set bidding parameters for an auction.

16. The system of claim 1 wherein the price offering creation logic uses exponential smoothing to derive parameters for the price offerings.

17. The system of claim 1 further including search logic operative to search for items in the lots.

18. The system of claim 1 further including falling price default logic operative to create fixed default falling price parameters.

19. The system of claim 1 further including scheduled allocation logic operative to create a scheduled set of offerings with predetermined parameters.

20. The system of claim 1 further including item display logic operative to display information about items in each of the lots with controls that allow the user to access the business rule definition logic for the item in the lot for which information is displayed.

21. The system of claim 1 further including a forecasting report generator operative to produce a report that forecasts future operation of the offering creation logic.

22. A sales system for lots of items, comprising:

means for defining machine-readable business rules,

means for automatically creating a plurality of different offerings for items in the lots based on the machine-readable business rules defined by the means for defining, and

wherein the means for automatically creating optimizes return based the machine-readable business rules defined by the means for defining using different offering parameter values for the different offerings.

23. A method of selling lots of items, comprising:

defining machine-readable business rules,

automatically creating a plurality of different offerings for items in the lots based on the machine-readable business rules, and

wherein the step of automatically creating optimizes return based on the machine-readable business rules defined in the step of defining using different offering parameter values for the different offerings.