System and method for dynamic price setting and facilitation of commercial transactions

Abstract

The present invention provides methods and systems for defining commercial transaction components; defining rules for mapping customer transactions into individual components; market segmentation in light of these individual definitions and bundling individual components of an offer into optimized packages for presentation and sale. A data processing system in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, examines the commercial behavior of enrolled customers, breaks each of the constituent transactions into purchases of atom-level components; catalogues those components; extracts demographic information from said transactions and other sources; facilitates demographic studies of groups of such customers; optimizes offerings to such groups; and facilitates the consummation of those offers of sale. The processing system may also facilitate customers fiscal management through the communication of data necessary to practice the instant invention.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present application claims the benefit of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 714,853 filed Nov. 15, 2000, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Applications Ser. Nos. 60 / 180,363 filed Feb. 4, 2000 and 60 / 203,183 filed May 8, 2000, all of which are assigned to the assignee of the present patent application and incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] This invention relates generally to a method and system for more efficiently matching desired goods and services and offer terms for those goods and services to willing consumers to facilitate commercial transactions. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Traditional Marketing [0004] The marketing of goods and services to consumers has always been more art than science, and the science aspect has been rather inexact. The inexactness of the science derives primarily from the fact that vendors are unable to obtain, at least without prohibitive cost, sufficiently accurate inform...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0035] While such integration is not a necessary feature of the invention, when practiced with the invention, it greatly enhances its efficiency and assures greater customer acceptance of the invention. Additional benefits of a transaction database tied to a bill paying and / or presentment engine or related process (a CSO, or other such data aggregator, such as, for example, for electronic bill presentment and payment: cyberbills.com, paymybills, yodlee.com) include the customer's ability to budget with a precision that has not been previously available. Because each expense is broken down into its component parts, consumers may budget by exactly the number of units required. Such a system is more completely described in our other application Ser. No. XXXXXX, “ELECTRONIC COMMERCIAL BILL PAYING SYSTEM”

[0064] In accordance with yet other aspects of the invention, vendors will be able to offer services that would be otherwise unprofitable due to the marketing necessary to reach otherwise scattered likely consumers, thereby increasing the vendor's competitive lines of goods or services. Thus, if an obscure market for a unique good should surface from analysis of purchasing habits, the vendor may consolidate that market, offer the obscure good and capitalize on that demand without the great expenditure of marketing to geographically or demographically diverse consumers.

Problems solved by technology

The marketing of goods and services to consumers has always been more art than science, and the science aspect has been rather inexact.

The inexactness of the science derives primarily from the fact that vendors are unable to obtain, at least without prohibitive cost, sufficiently accurate information concerning consumer's actual preferences, either individually, or in the aggregate.

The vendor's strategy for ascertaining aggregated consumer preference data is, presently, to concentrate on segments of the consumer market, but they are only able to isolate or define these segments at a prohibitively high cost.

Generally, the factors the vendor selects to define a market segment are based upon demographic data which is costly to compile.

In practice, these assumptions generally prove to be reliable enough to justify the cost of the survey, but all too often, just barely justified.

Knowing, for instance, that most members of a constructed demographic group, (or “market segment”) report the purchase of a particular product will not justify a vendor in presuming the same purchase by each member of that group.

If either the model is flawed or the group's behavior does not accurately reflect the market place, the resulting impressions of the marketplace are misleading.

Even once they have targeted an audience; vendors then must spend a tremendous amount of money to deploy the marketing plan.

For example, if a bicycle manufacturer has learned that 25-45 year old, college educated, white males are more likely to buy mountain bikes costing over $900 than any other market segment, it is not possible to immediately offer such bikes to all those, and only those in that segment, because it is not possible to accurately and precisely identify them.

For the foregoing reasons, while current marketing does work, and products are sold, the process is extremely inefficient.

For instance, few consumers would readily admit to purchasing large quantities of fatty foods.

Even more importantly, most consumers believe they have certain preferences or spending habits but they are simply honestly mistaken.

This kind of mistake is prevalent with recurring, but small and variable expenses such as groceries and phone charges.

Another problem with traditional market research is that the information gathered has a limited shelf life.

Therefore, even the time required to compile the results of such a snapshot tends to diminish its value.

Due to inconsistencies in and unreliability of self-reporting, the data is less scientific than that allowed by other “direct observation” disciplines.

Motoyama also fails to teach collecting information from one's household bills and using that information to find the most suitable product or offer terms.

Among the shortcomings of Peckover is its inability of deriving and / or validating the consumers' preferences from their purchase history.

Because it is neither comprehensive, i.e. contains all of consumer's purchase patterns, nor does it catalogue the terms of the purchases, there is little data to extend the information beyond that garnered by following a shopper as that shopper window shops.

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