170 results about "Electronic catalog" patented technology

A system and method of interactive cataloging of products and services by end users across multiple sales and marketing channels provide each end user with access to domain-independent catalog data from a plurality of vendor organizations through a catalog server system. Anonymous end user cataloging actions of products and / or services across multiple manufacturing, distribution, and retailing channels create personalized profile instances that are based on stored vendor catalog profile templates in the catalog server system, and stored in the end user's personalized electronic catalog as pre-sale digital receipts. An end user's personalized electronic catalog(s) can be shared with peers using mutual agreement permissions as managed by the catalog server system. Pre-sale digital receipts are used to provide a safe, secure, and convenient method for modifying an end user's actionable cataloged items from a pre-sale status to purchased status when purchased and to provide a traceable audit trail for each cataloged item or purchased item in order to facilitate respective pre-sales channel activities and post-sales channel support and services.

A Web based system provides informational services for assisting customers in selecting products or other types of items from an electronic catalog of a merchant. Users of the system can create and join user communities, such as communities based on user hobbies, localities, professions, and organizations. The system also supports implicit membership communities that are based on email addresses (e.g., all users having a “nasa.com” email address), shipping / billing addresses, and other known user information. Using purchase history data collected for online users, the system automatically identifies and generates lists of the most popular items (and / or items that are becoming popular) within particular communities, and makes such information available to users for viewing. For example, in the context of an online book store users of the nasa.com community may automatically be presented a Web page which lists the bestselling book titles among nasa.com users, or may be sent email notifications of purchase events or hotselling books within the community. Another feature involves automatically notifying users interested in particular products of other users (preferably other members of the same community) that have purchased the same or similar products. For example, in one embodiment, when a user accesses a book detail page, the detail page is customized to include the names and email addresses of other members of the user's community that recently purchased the same book.

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for demonstrating e-commerce capabilities on a network via a simulation. Data connectivity is provided over a network between a simulated user, a simulated product distributor, a simulated product vendor, and a simulated financial service provider. An electronic catalog is displayed over a network that shows a product for sale by the simulated product vendor. The simulated user is shown browsing the electronic catalog on the network. Further, a consultation over the network, relating to the product for sale shown in the electronic catalog, is depicted between the simulated user and the simulated product distributor. Selection of the product by the simulated user is illustrated. The simulated user is portrayed to authorize payment alter an on-line review of an account of the user.

A computer-implemented matching service matches users to other users, and / or to user communities, based at least in part on a computer analysis of event data reflective of user behaviors. The event data may, for example, evidence user affinities for particular items represented in an electronic catalog, such as book titles, music titles, movie titles, and / or other types of items that tend to reflect the traits of users. Event data reflective of other types of user actions, such as item-detail-page viewing events, browse node visits, search query submissions, and / or web browsing patterns may additionally or alternatively be considered. By taking such event data into consideration, the matching service reduces the burden on users to explicitly supply personal profile information, and reduces poor results caused by exaggerations and other inaccuracies in such profile information.

A system provides a user interface through which users can flexibly tag individual items represented in an electronic catalog with user-defined tags, such as text strings, and obtain recommendations that are specific to particular tags. The tags and tag-item assignments created by each user are stored persistently in association with the user, and may be kept private to the user or exposed to others. Once a user has assigned a tag to a number of items, the user (or another user in some embodiments) can request and obtain recommendations that are specific to this tag. These recommendations may be generated in real time by a recommendation service that identifies items that are collectively similar or related to the items associated with the tag.

A computer-implemented matching service matches users to other users, and / or to user communities, based at least in part on a computer analysis of event data reflective of user behaviors. The event data may, for example, evidence user affinities for particular items represented in an electronic catalog, such as book titles, music titles, movie titles, and / or other types of items that tend to reflect the traits of users. Event data reflective of other types of user actions, such as item-detail-page viewing events, browse node visits, search query submissions, and / or web browsing patterns may additionally or alternatively be considered. By taking such event data into consideration, the matching service reduces the burden on users to explicitly supply personal profile information, and reduces poor results caused by exaggerations and other inaccuracies in such profile information.

A computer-implemented service associated with an electronic catalog analyzes purchase histories of users, and / or other types of activity data reflective of user affinities for specific items, to identify items that are significantly more popular in specific user communities than in a general user population. The communities may, for example, include email-based communities (e.g., all users with email addresses associated with a particular company), shipping address based communities (e.g., all users with shipping addresses in Seattle), and / or communities based on other types of user attributes. In one embodiment, a user of the service can select a particular community, such as by selecting the name of a corresponding organization or geographic region, to view a list of items having relatively high popularity levels therein. The results of the analysis may additionally or alternatively be used to affirmatively notify users of associations between particular items and communities, and / or to recommend items to users.

This invention relates to an electronic commerce software catalog system and a method of use. This electronic catalog system is specifically designed to provide the electronic shoppers with a customer-centric, virtual shopping experience by first facilitating the creation of customer-personas and their catalog-content affinities by a "Sales Representative", secondly facilitating the persona-association based configuration of a "Customer-Actor", by the actual "Shopper". Thirdly, the shopper selects an "on-the-desktop" computer directed "Sales-Advisor", that generates advice on catalog navigation, product applications and product function that is tuned to the proxy customer's configured personality and specific needs.

An electronic catalog system provides an interface for users to author and post pieces of content, referred to as “blurbs,” for viewing by other users. The blurbs submitted by a particular author are made available for viewing in an author-specific blog (web log) format. Blurbs may also be obtained from external sources, such as from blogs hosted by various web sites. A personalized blurb selection component selects blurbs to present to users based on histories of catalog items selected by such users, and / or based on various other criteria. The blurbs selected for a particular user are presented within a personal log or “plog,” which may be updated daily and will typically contain entries from many different authors. User feedback provided on specific blurbs is taken into consideration by the personalized blurb selection algorithms.

This invention involves an electronic catalog system which employs the knowledge and experience of a "Sales Agent", which is provided to a computer data base, and used with an inference engine to assist and guide actual customers to products that they will most likely be interested in purchasing. This system is employs hypothetical questions and answers, based on the sales agents experience with generic customers, as well as criteria and constraints provided by both the Sales Agent and the electronic catalog content.

A method and apparatus for validating, correcting and reconciling purchase orders. In one embodiment, each line item of the purchase order is validated to ensure that it corresponds to an item offered by the supplier. Each line item can be compared to known errors and the erroneous part number replaced with a correct part number. Line items can be modified in accordance with a set of rules. The supplier can be notified of an invalid line item in a purchase order and can correct the invalid line item either before or after the purchase order is received by the supplier. Corrections performed by the supplier can be used to add to the set of rules to be used to process succeeding purchase orders. An electronic catalog of the buyer can be updated after buyer review to correct erroneous part numbers and other related information from various sources.

A computer process is disclosed for selecting items to present or recommend to users based on the referring sites accessed by such users. The process includes tracking referrals of users from referring sites to a target site, and recording the item selections of the referred users from an electronic catalog of the target site. The process may also include analyzing the recorded item selections of the users to identify, for a particular subset of the referring sites, a set of items that correspond to group preferences of users referred to the target site by the subset of referring sites. These identified items may thereafter be presented to users who access a site that is a member of the subset of referring sites.

A flexible, intelligent electronic procurement method and system that emulates and learns from the adaptive behavior of a user trying to find a product in an electronic catalog. The invention allows for searching heterogeneous catalogs in virtually any format, and does not require pre-defined hierarchies, nor the pre-loading of vendor catalog contents, nor the scrubbing of vendor data. It does not impose fixed structures on the user, and it does not force the user to think like someone else. Instead, the invention allows the user to choose their own way to navigate a catalog of items, and then by recording successful search scenarios and storing that knowledge in a dynamic collection of search paths, the invention organically evolves. As the collection of search paths can be accessed by other users, the utility of the invention increases over time once implemented in a given environment.

An electronic commerce system provides various features for assisting customers in locating items and generating orders from a merchant's electronic catalog, and for assisting customers and merchants in communicating about such orders. A user-definable categories feature allows customers and / or merchants to define search queries for searching the electronic catalog, and to store these search queries under user-defined category names for subsequent use.

A viewer for displaying an electronic book and providing for electronic commerce. In conjunction with viewing an electronic book, a user can view information about products and services, view an on-line electronic catalog, and receive samples of products available for purchase. By entering a purchase request, the user can purchase products or services. In the case of a digital product, the user can download the purchased product directly into the viewer. The viewer also records statistics concerning purchase and information requests in order to recommend related products or services, or for directing particular types of advertisements to the user.

A method prepares a response when providing e-Directory services to a user making a user request for location-based supplier information. The method includes identifying from said user request a desired location for which the user is requesting supplier information, identifying from the user request at least one informational element useful in querying a directory of suppliers, querying a primary directory of suppliers using said desired location and said informational element in order to generate primary supplier hits, querying the world wide web (www) using said desired location and said informational element in order to generate www supplier hits, merging said primary supplier hits with said www supplier hits to create a list of suppliers including a plurality of facts respecting each supplier in said list, sorting all supplier hits in said list by proximity to said desired location, purging any duplicate supplier hits, and formatting said list of suppliers to remove any facts extraneous to presentation over a viewing device to said user.

A system and method of browsing electronic catalogs from a plurality of merchants. The electronic catalog system emulates the portability and usability of a traditional paper and ink catalog, especially when realized on a tablet or mobile device. Product data feeds from multiple merchants are collected and processed to build a product database. A server retrieves product data and serves it to users browsing the electronic catalogs. Users can request more detailed information and order products through the server and merchant websites. Users communicate with the server and merchant websites either through a standalone software application or via a standard web browser. Merchants are able to update the contents of their electronic catalogs through a merchant portal.

Behavior-based associations are extrapolated to items for which the quantity of collected user activity data is insufficient to create meaningful or reliable behavior-based associations (“behavior-deficient” items). The behavior-based associations are extrapolated based on content-based associations, or another type of “substitutability” association, between the behavior-deficient items and other items. The items can be any type of item for which user behaviors (e.g., purchases, accesses, downloads, etc.) can be monitored and analyzed to detect behavior-based associations, and for which item content or other available information can be used to assess item substitutability. For example, the items can be products represented in an electronic catalog, web pages or other documents accessible on a network, or web sites.

A viewer for displaying an electronic book and providing for electronic commerce. In conjunction with viewing an electronic book, a user can view information about products and services, view an on-line electronic catalog, and receive samples of products available for purchase. By entering a purchase request, the user can purchase products or services. In the case of a digital product, the user can download the purchased product directly into the viewer. The viewer also records statistics concerning purchase and information requests in order to recommend related products or services, or for directing particular types of advertisements to the user.

An intelligent product catalog system provides for electronic creation, management and viewing of product information using a multimedia display system. A central database repository stores the product information and provides for an unlimited number of product attributes and dynamic reconfiguration of the product information. The central database repository comprises a meta data system, a scheme system and an object model system. A plurality of applications access the central database repository, the applications being automatically adaptive to the dynamic reconfiguration of the product information. A user interface provides display, sorting and filtering of the product information including the unlimited number of product attributes.

This electronic catalog searching system first, calculates attribute relevance (e.g., strongly-relevant, weakly-relevant, and irrelevant) for each node in a hierarchy (e.g., abstraction hierarchy, decompositional hierarchy) based on assignment constraints made at the nodes representing real-world concrete entities and then combines attribute relevance with a forward-checking parametric search to implement a hierarchical exploration scheme that can be enabled over a multitude of hierarchies residing on a base of concrete entities.

A Web based system provides informational services for assisting customers in selecting products or other types of items from an electronic catalog of a merchant. Users of the system can create and join user communities, such as communities based on user hobbies, localities, professions, and organizations. The system also supports implicit membership communities that are based on email addresses (e.g., all users having a “nasa.com” email address), shipping / billing addresses, and other known user information. Using purchase history data collected for online users, the system automatically identifies and generates lists of the most popular items (and / or items that are becoming popular) within particular communities, and makes such information available to users for viewing. For example, in the context of an online book store users of the nasa.com community may automatically be presented a Web page which lists the bestselling book titles among nasa.com users, or may be sent email notifications of purchase events or hotselling books within the community. Another feature involves automatically notifying users interested in particular products of other users (preferably other members of the same community) that have purchased the same or similar products. For example, in one embodiment, when a user accesses a book detail page, the detail page is customized to include the names and email addresses of other members of the user's community that recently purchased the same book.

An electronic catalog system provides an interface for users to author and post pieces of content, referred to as “blurbs,” for viewing by other users. The blurbs submitted by a particular author are made available for viewing in an author-specific blog (web log) format. Blurbs may also be obtained from external sources, such as from blogs hosted by various web sites. A personalized blurb selection component selects blurbs to present to users based on histories of catalog items selected by such users, and / or based on various other criteria. The blurbs selected for a particular user are presented within a personal log or “plog,” which may be updated daily and will typically contain entries from many different authors. User feedback provided on specific blurbs is taken into consideration by the personalized blurb selection algorithms.

An online store system, which may be implemented as a web site or another type of interactive system, presents context-sensitive information to customers about their prior orders during browsing of an electronic catalog of products. In one embodiment, when a customer accesses a detail page for a particular product, the detail page is supplemented with information, such as status information, about a related order placed by the customer. The related order may be an order for the product represented in the detail page or may be for a related product. Information about related orders may additionally or alternatively be added to other types of pages, such as product category pages and shopping cart pages. In one embodiment, a customer's related order information is maintained in a cache during the customer's browsing session, and the cache is updated in real time to reflect actions performed by the customer.

A Supplier Portal is provided to allow a Supplier to self-author the business process elements (BPEs) of a business process (BP) to create, manage and publish rich-content for use in eCatalogs, Data Pools, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and other knowledge management situations. The resulting business process (BP) for content management incorporates the Supplier's business process (BP) model. At the business process (BP) level, self-authoring allows users to adapt business process elements (BPEs) such as workflows, approval rules and approver roles and permissions, event notification and metrics. At the activity level, self-authoring allows users to adapt business process elements (BPEs) such as user interaction templates, business process (BP) rules and user roles and permissions that relate to the input, configuration, rationalization, classification, value extraction, quality control, publication, and ongoing management of rich-content. The resulting published rich-content incorporates a supplier's unique way of doing business while adhering to the quality, integrity and consistency imposed by the Supplier Portal to achieve a seamless published rich-content such as an ecatalog. The Supplier Portal can be any and all of a hosted behind a firewall solution, accessible via a browser on at least one of a Personal Computer, hand held, or wireless / wired networked communication or standalone device.

A system and method for providing a timeshared electronic catalog is disclosed. The system comprises an electronic database having a plurality of data records that comprise a master data set. The system comprises at least a first and second subset of the data records, wherein each subset comprises one or more data records selected from the master data set. The system includes a software program comprising a data record masking module for selectively providing a first view for displaying one of the subsets to a first user. Each of the plurality of data records contains a plurality of data elements, or fields, or attributes. The data record masking module is further for selecting which data elements are provided in the view. The system further includes a means for selectively providing which executable features from a plurality of executable features may be provided with each view.