Location-Based Promotional Offer Discovery System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for providing and utilizing promotional offers, such as coupons, are inefficient due to the ubiquity of paper and electronic coupons leading to decreased impact, as customers often fail to redeem them due to inconvenience and lack of awareness of nearby offers, especially when traveling.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system for a mobile device that identifies the user's location and retrieves nearby promotional offers from a remote server, displaying them on a map with customizable settings and virtual pins for user-configured locations of interest, enhancing user engagement through virtual incentive badges.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If paper coupons are distributed widely through mail, magazines, and newspapers, then the quantity of promotional offers increases, but the cost of delivery increases and the impact decreases due to ubiquity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces physical paper coupons with electronic coupon images that can be displayed on mobile devices. The system captures images of paper coupons using the device camera, converts them to electronic format, and stores them in a database. This eliminates the need for physical distribution through mail, magazines, and newspapers while maintaining the promotional offer content, thereby reducing delivery costs while preserving quantity.
2Ease of manufacture
If electronic coupons are delivered via Internet, e-mails, and mobile messages, then the delivery cost decreases, but the impact decreases due to ubiquity and customers do not wish to receive advertising regularly
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables customers to actively search for and discover promotional offers themselves rather than passively receiving unsolicited advertisements. The mobile device automatically detects the customer's location, queries the database for nearby promotional offers, and displays relevant coupons on a map interface. This self-service approach allows customers to find offers when they need them, increasing engagement and impact while maintaining low delivery costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adapts the promotional offers presented to customers based on their current location, movement patterns, and browsing history. As customers move to different geographic areas, the system automatically updates the displayed offers to reflect nearby merchants. This dynamic behavior ensures that customers receive relevant, location-specific promotions rather than static, generic advertisements, thereby maintaining high impact.
3Loss of information
If customers search for promotional offers on the Internet, then the quantity of available information increases, but the time required to find relevant offers increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-loads and stores promotional offer data in a local database on the mobile device before the customer needs it. When the device is online, it retrieves and caches coupon information, merchant details, and location data. This preliminary action ensures that when customers search for offers, the information is already available locally, eliminating the need for time-consuming Internet searches while maintaining comprehensive information availability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system filters and displays promotional offers based on the customer's specific location and nearby merchants, rather than showing all available offers globally. The database is organized by geographic location, and the system queries only for offers in the customer's current area. This local quality approach reduces the information search space from millions of global offers to a manageable local set, significantly reducing search time while maintaining information relevance.
4Quantity of substance
If customers possess coupons in paper or electronic format, then the quantity of coupons increases, but the ease of redemption decreases because customers do not have specific coupons at hand when visiting stores
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically detects when a customer is near a merchant offering promotional coupons and proactively displays the relevant offers on the mobile device. The location detection system monitors the device's GPS coordinates and compares them with stored merchant locations. When a match is found, the system automatically retrieves and displays the corresponding coupon, eliminating the need for customers to manually search through their collections. This self-service approach ensures customers have the right coupon at the right place at the right time, maximizing redemption ease.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for searching and displaying promotional offers on a display screen of a mobile device based on current user location have been disclosed. An example method comprises identifying a location of the mobile device, retrieving from a remote server one or more promotional offers provided by merchants located in the nearby area within a predetermined distance from the identified location, associating the location of the mobile device and locations of the one or more merchants providing the one or more promotional offers with a virtual map, generating one or more map elements associated with locations of the mobile device and the one or more merchants, and displaying the virtual map and the one or more map elements.