Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Electronic shopping
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-23
2002-10-29
Olszewski, Robert P. (Department: 2167)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Electronic shopping
Reexamination Certificate
active
06473738
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE DISCLOSURE
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer network-implemented service and, more particularly, to a methodology for compiling, managing and saving name lists, along with associated items, compiled by a shopper which thereby engenders a multiple-person buying experience.
2. Description of the Background Art
Automating the “on-line” shopping experience on the Internet should mirror the best aspects of the “in-store” experience and, where possible, even improve upon the in-store experience because of the ability of the Internet to perform computations as well as manage and automatically store databases. Current on-line shopping has not mirrored these best aspects, nor has the shopping experience been particularly user-friendly—for instance, shopping lists being compiled dynamically are oftentimes lost or abandoned in mid-stream without being automatically saved.
Traditionally, customer access to and interaction with on-line merchandisers of products (e.g., books or food items) over the Internet is specific to the individual customer, that is, a customer accesses the merchandiser via a Web site address (e.g., Uniform Resource Locator (URL) “www.amazon.com” for books, and “www.priceline.com” for food) which controls interactions with the Web site only for this customer. As an example, suppose the on-line customer accesses the Web site home page of “amazon.com”, a popular book merchandiser (among other items). Once connected to this home page, a registered customer provides general information, such as an e-mail address, and oftentimes security information, such as a personal identification number (PIN), to utilize the services of the Web site in completing purchases. The customer experience while accessing the Web site is personal in nature in the sense that purchases of books available via the Web site are, in the beginning, treated as if intended only for the identified customer, that is, it is not possible at this juncture for the customer to explicitly shop for other, multiple parties.
As alluded to, the “amazon.com” Web site is a well-known Internet site for purchasing books, so differentiating the book purchasing experience using “amazon.com” (which is representative of virtually all known purchasing techniques over the Internet) serves as the point-of-departure for the present inventive subject matter. Thus, to distinguish the principles of operation of the inventive subject matter from “amazon.com”, it is elucidating to first discuss in an overview manner high-level aspects of the technique for buying books on the “amazon.com” Web site, especially when purchasing books for other parties as well as the customer (referred to as the shopper below).
With “amazon.com”, the visualization mechanism used for on-line purchases is that of filling a “shopping cart” with the books selected as the Web site is perused for books of interest to purchase by the shopper. The books in the shopping cart are all associated with the shopper at the commencement of the shopping experience. Thus, in using this basically-universal virtual “shopping cart” paradigm, the shopper peruses the “amazon.com” Web site searching for and then selecting books of interest to the shopper and/or third parties, whereupon the shopper “deposits” book choices into the shopping cart as the books are selected. However, of particular relevance is the fact that all books are deposited into a single shopping cart without the ability to keep separate book selections intended for different parties, that is, the shopping cart is not “compartmentalized” with compartments being associated with third parties. The shopper is responsible for remembering book selections—either by memory or written notes—for third parties; one can imagine the enormity of this task if the shopper is selecting books for numerous third parties during a single shopping excursion. This task is the burden of the shopper because the “amazon.com” shopping technique only introduces third parties into the shopping experience at the tail-end of shopping, namely, when it is time to check-out the selected books. Only then is it possible to designate which selections are intended for third parties, and to provide shipping address information for such third parties. And to ensure that all parties receive the desired selections, the shopper must at this time complete the mechanical task of entering, for each selected book, the total number of books to be checked-out and paid for by the shopper—it is at this point in the shopping venture that the shopper must recall, via notes or memory, who is to receive which book—because only one of each selected book appears in the shopping cart.
To understand the limitations of this traditional approach to on-line purchasing utilizing the Internet, consider the following enhanced service (heretofore unavailable) to Internet users. One type of visual extension to the “shopping cart” analogy, as alluded to above and which is helpful in understanding aspects of the present inventive subject matter, is that of arranging the shopping cart with separate, virtual compartments—each compartment being associated with a single, unique party. For example, suppose a wife/mother desires to book-shop for her husband and two children as well as herself, then the virtual shopping cart has four separate compartments. The shopper then places the selected book into the compartment of the individual for whom the book is to be purchased. Moreover, it is readily visualized that the same book title may be purchased for more than one individual. For instance, two separate copies of the same book title—one book for each child—may be placed into each of the two shopping cart “children” compartments.
At check-out, the virtual shopping cart according to the present invention is emptied one compartment-at-a-time and these books may be shipped separately from other compartments; on the other hand, the total bill for all book purchases placed into separate compartments is paid by the single on-line shopper.
It is readily contemplated, even in view of only this high-level exposition of “amazon.com” compared to the inventive subject matter, that the shopping experience utilizing the inventive subject matter is what one would intuitively expect, whereas the “amazon.com” experience is counter-intuitive. From another viewpoint, the shopping experience in accordance with the inventive subject matter parallels an actual “in-store” shopping experience; moreover, such experience is the converse of the experience using “amazon.com”.
Other key points of differentiation, which are not elaborated upon below, will become clear to the person of ordinary skill in the art after the detailed discussion of the present invention:
(a) with “amazon.com”, if a shopper selects but does not purchase items, in order to retrieve the saved items for this particular shopper, it is necessary to log-on to “amazon.com” from the same computer that the shopper used to make the selections is initially; and
(b) with “amazon.com”, there is no purchase history for each of the parties for whom the shopper purchased books.
Thus, the art is thus devoid of teachings or suggestions whereby an on-line shopper can commence the shopping experience with the shopper first preparing a list of multiple third parties for whom the shopper desires to purchase selected books. In effect, this list “tags along” with the shopper, as the shopper searches on-line for books to purchase, in the same manner a “compartmentalized” shopping cart would be “pushed along” by a shopper. Then, the shopper can associate a selected book located during the on-line search as a book intended for the shopper and/or a third party, such as a spouse or child of the shopper.
Moreover, the art is devoid of mechanisms, visual or otherwise, to: (a) maintain the name list of parties for future use, including the ability to add or delete individual names and/or modify shipping instructions during the on-line shopping session; (b) maintain a history of purchases; (c) maintain an incomplete shop
Jaketic Bryan
Olszewski Robert P.
Peoples John T.
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