Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-01
2001-08-28
Millin, Vincent (Department: 2164)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
C705S016000, C705S018000, C705S021000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06282516
ABSTRACT:
CROSS REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
The present invention is related to commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,723,212; 4,910,672; 5,173,851; and 5,612,868, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/663,680, filed on Jun. 14, 1996, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/225,449, filed on Jan. 6, 1999, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to interconnected computer systems and, more particularly, to computer systems used in a retail store environment.
2. Discussion of Background
FIG. 1
shows a conventional retail store environment, including a store point-of-sale (POS) controller
10
, a store point-of-sale loop (POS loop)
12
, and multiple cash registers or point-of-sale terminals
14
, two of which are shown. The store POS controller
10
communicates with the cash registers
14
through the store POS loop
12
, which is a data bus that extends through the store from one cash register
14
to the next and to which all the cash registers
14
and the store POS controller
10
are connected. The store POS controller
10
has associated database files (not shown) for storing data pertaining to store activities, such as an item record file defining the items available for sale in the store.
A difficulty with the configuration shown in
FIG. 1
is that this configuration does not support supplemental functions, such as in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives, reading and processing coupons brought to the store by customers, and reading other coded items at the point-of-sale, such as bank cards, customer loyalty cards, such as frequent shopper cards, credit cards, and checks, etc.
Another system has been proposed utilizing a Kiosk located in a retail store (see e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,197 to Axler et al and U.S. Pat. No. 5,039,848 to Stoken). The Kiosk would provide support for supplemental functions, such as in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives. However, this system does not typically support in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives at any of various departments, such as the deli, cosmetics, butcher, seafood, produce, floral, etc., departments within the retail store since the Kiosk is a large apparatus and therefore is typically located at a predetermined location within the retail store.
Another system has been proposed utilizing coupon dispensers distributed throughout various location within a retail store for dispensing pre-printed coupons. These coupon dispensers, however, do not provide support for supplemental functions, such as in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives. In addition, this system does not support in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives based on a customer's shopping history since only pre-printed coupons are provided.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, one object of this invention is to provide a novel process, system and computer readable medium for providing in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives at any of various departments, such as the deli, cosmetics, butcher, seafood, produce, floral, etc., departments within a retail store.
Another object of this invention is to provide a novel process, system and computer readable medium for providing in-store printing of discount coupons and/or other purchasing incentives at any of various departments, such as the deli, cosmetics, butcher, seafood, produce, floral, etc., departments within a retail store based on a customer's shopping history.
The above and other objects are achieved according to the present invention by providing a new and improved process, system and computer readable medium for distributing purchasing incentives throughout departments of a retail store including an incentive processor including a network controller and a database for storing shopping histories of consumers associated with respective unique consumer identifiers; a plurality of incentive distributors located throughout the departments of the retail store, each incentive distributor of the plurality of incentive distributors having a unique address, and including, a processor, a printing device, a network interface device, and one of a card reader device and a scanner device; and a network, coupling the network controller to network interface devices of the plurality of incentive distributors, for effecting two-way communications between the incentive processor and the plurality of incentive distributors. Each card reader device and each scanner device of the plurality of incentive distributors is configured to detect a card device passed therethrough or key tag device scanned therein, respectively. The card device and the key tag device having a unique consumer identifier encoded therein, and the unique consumer identifier is detected by a card reader or scanner device of a respective incentive distributor of the plurality of incentive distributors and transmitted via a network interface of the respective incentive distributor over the network to the network controller coupled to the incentive processor. The incentive processor is configured to generate the purchasing incentives based on a shopping history of a consumer associated with a detected unique consumer identifier received from the respective incentive distributor and a location of the respective incentive distributor determined from the unique address thereof
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Catalina Marketing International, Inc.
Millin Vincent
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
Patel Jagdish N
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