Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Electronic shopping
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-26
2001-06-19
Millin, Vincent (Department: 2165)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Electronic shopping
Reexamination Certificate
active
06249773
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of shopping over computer networks, for example a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), and any combination thereof. In particular, the invention relates to the field of tools for building, modifying, maintaining and accessing shopping lists for shopping over computer networks.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet is increasingly being exploited as a means to reach consumers directly. For example, purchasing consumable items from an electronic grocery or retail outlet is a business beginning to take form on the Internet. However, current practice has identified several contributing factors acting as barriers to wide acceptance of this new marketing channel. First, shopping in a grocery store will occur one or more times a week. Second, the typical inventory is on the order of tens of thousands of products, many of which are sold in several different sizes. Thirdly, consumers selecting to use such a service are doing so in the hope of saving time.
However, shopping for a hundred or so items out of an inventory of thousands or tens of thousands of items in an electronic shopping service is thus far a very tedious task for consumers. This task becomes worse when the service is utilized several times a month. Such a service can relate to many different situations too numerous to mention. A good example at the retail level is replenishing consumable and perishable items like groceries from a supermarket. A good example on the wholesale level is a building contractor purchasing building supplies.
The IBM Net.Commerce application and several other implemented shopping services utilize the notion of an electronic shopping cart. The inventory of the store is presented in a text list or in graphical form, perhaps through images of the stacked shelves in the store, by an Internet network. Items are placed into the shopping cart, for example by selecting a text item or by moving a product icon from a shelf into an electronic shopping cart by manipulating a computer pointer such as a mouse. Items in the cart can be reviewed and removed, that is deleted, prior to ordering.
Simple shopping carts do not address the problems associated with searching the store and selecting the items. This process can be both time consuming and unproductive in the sense that the consumer may not be able to find what they are looking for even though the store may offer the item in their inventory. Moreover, many purchases are repurchases of the same items over and over, for example milk, juice, cereal, eggs and bread in the context of grocery shopping. Notwithstanding the need for repetitive purchases, it is usually necessary to start with an empty shopping cart.
Other services offered by Peapod (www.peapod.com), Streamline, Hannaford (www.hannaford.com), PCFoods (pcfoods.com), Pinkdot (www.pinkdot.com), and Wal-Mart (www.wal-mart.com), for example, also exhibit the shortcomings noted above.
There is a pressing need to simplify many aspects of electronic shopping. One such aspect is that of inventories that are unmanageably large, from the viewpoint of a consumer perusing a vast number of items. A second such aspect is that of simplifying the repetitive purchase of consumable and perishable items, without always having to start with the equivalent of an empty shopping cart. A third such aspect is simplifying the computer operating tasks which must be undertaken to implement the electronic shopping. Overall, there is a pressing need to find a method or tool which enables consumers to save significant amounts of time by utilizing electronic shopping.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
The invention taught herein satisfies the pressing need to simplify electronic shopping. In its broadest sense, the invention is a client/server tool that manages an individualized selection of product offerings, referred to as a “shopping list”. The shopping list tool comprises several components, which enable consumers to peruse inventories that are otherwise unmanageably large, which simplify the repetitive purchase of consumable and perishable items and which simplify the computer operating tasks associated with electronic shopping. Overall, the new shopping list tool enables consumers to save significant amounts of time by shopping electronically, referred to herein as electronic commerce (e-commerce), at an e-commerce site. E-commerce can be conducted over computer networks, for example, the Internet, WANS, LANs and private dial-in access connections.
More particularly, the shopping list tool comprises: a consumer preferred user interface; a database for historical purchase data and inventory data; a product sorting method; a product searching method; and, a product selecting method.
Together these components enable a consumer to efficiently find and select items for purchase much as they would do at home by building a shopping list. In a particularly advantageous embodiment, the shopping list tool not only operates efficiently against a large inventory, but provides a customized reduced inventory in the form of previous named shopping lists to use as a starting point, or indeed, to use exactly as recalled.
A method for engaging in electronic commerce (e-commerce) over a network from an e-commerce site, in accordance with an inventive arrangement, comprises the steps of: storing data representing an inventory of items for sale at the e-commerce site; storing historic and active shopping lists of respective shoppers at the e-commerce site; providing logged on shoppers with a shopping list builder tool for constructing entirely new shopping lists and for constructing new shopping lists from the stored shopping lists; accepting completed active shopping lists from the logged on shoppers; consummating purchases of products on the accepted lists; and, delivering the purchased products to the shoppers.
The method can further comprise the steps of: storing authorization data enabling shoppers to purchase the items at the e-commerce site on credit; and, authorizing shoppers to purchase the items as the shoppers log on to the e-commerce site.
The method can further comprise the step of communicating with the shoppers over one or more of the Internet, a wide area network and a local area network.
The method can further comprise the step of delivering the purchased products to the shoppers at a pickup location or delivering the purchased products to the shoppers at locations selected by the shoppers.
The method can further comprise the step of enabling the shoppers to use the shopping list builder to create, merge, modify an/or delete the named lists.
The method can further comprise the step of enabling the shoppers to use the shopping list builder to search the inventory data base for specific products by brand name, product type, cost and on-sale status.
The method can further comprise the steps of: compiling a cumulative shopping list for each shopper; enabling each shopper to access each shopper's own cumulative shopping list; and, preventing shoppers from deleting and modifying the cumulative shopping lists.
The method can advantageously further comprise the steps of: displaying lists of product specials, for example unadvertised sale items; and, enabling the shoppers to select the product specials for addition to a shopping list in progress, for addition to a virtual shopping cart, or both.
A computer server programmed with a routine set of instructions for supporting electronic commerce (e-commerce) over a network from an e-commerce site, in accordance with another inventive arrangement, comprises: means for storing data representing an inventory of items for sale at the e-commerce site; means for storing historic and active shopping lists of respective shoppers at the e-commerce site; means for providing logged on shoppers with a shopping list builder tool for constructing entirely new shopping lists and for constructing new shopping lists from the stored shopping lists; means for accep
Allard David J.
Fortenberry Keith N.
Konopik Brad J.
Szabo Robert M.
Toohey James J.
Akerman & Senterfitt
International Business Machines Corp.
Millin Vincent
Rosen Nicholas David
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