Offer Processing System Automating Transaction Redemption
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional systems fail to effectively promote and distribute merchant offers to consumers over communications or social networks, leading to unawareness and inefficiency in marketing campaigns, and lack inexpensive and reliable methods for widespread offer dissemination.
Innovation Solution
A cloud-based offer processing system that aggregates offers from various sources, applies them to transactions during the payment processing phase, and allows users to share offers, using a blockchain-based chain of title to track and redeem values, thereby reducing user interface needs and processing resources.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If conventional systems are used to distribute merchant offers to consumers, then offer distribution is limited to traditional channels, but consumers remain unaware of merchant offers resulting in ineffective marketing campaigns
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a social network intermediary that connects merchants to consumers through offer distribution. The system uses social network infrastructure and user relationships as a mediator to deliver offers to consumers who are likely to be interested, based on their social connections and user profiles. This resolves the contradiction by using the intermediary to bridge the information gap while leveraging existing social infrastructure to maintain marketing effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service offer distribution by allowing users to automatically receive and share offers through their social network connections without requiring active participation from merchants or consumers. The automated offer distribution mechanism uses user profiles and social graph data to autonomously deliver offers to appropriate users, resolving the information awareness problem while maintaining system efficiency.
2Loss of information
If conventional offer distribution methods are used, then offer dissemination is limited, but reliable and inexpensive systems for widespread distribution are lacking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a universal offer distribution system that operates across multiple platforms including social networks, mobile devices, and web browsers. The system uses a standardized offer data structure and distribution protocol that can function across different social network platforms and devices, achieving widespread distribution reach while maintaining reliability through platform-agnostic architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates and distributes digital copies of offers across the social network infrastructure. Each offer is replicated and delivered to multiple users based on their profiles and connections, enabling inexpensive widespread distribution. The digital copying mechanism ensures consistent offer delivery across the network while maintaining reliability through centralized offer management and verification.
3Ease of operation
If users must manually activate offers, then user control is maintained, but processing resources and user interface complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically selecting and applying offers to user transactions before the user completes the purchase. The system pre-processes transaction data, identifies applicable offers based on user profiles and purchase intent, and applies the best offers automatically. This eliminates the need for manual user activation, simplifying operation while reducing the need for complex user interfaces for offer selection and management.
Data Source
AI summary
An offer processing system is configured to receive transaction data associated with user purchases from third party point of sales devices and/or third party payment processing systems. The offer processing system may then identify offers or savings that are applicable to the transaction data and redeem the offers on behalf of the users.