Multi-merchant Portal Category Mapping for Seamless Store Switching
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Solution Overview
Problem
In multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace platforms, users face inefficiencies when switching between e-commerce stores due to differing product categorization schemes, requiring them to start searching from the top level of each store's hierarchy, leading to increased time and resource consumption.
Innovation Solution
A multi-merchant portal that uses system categories as a pivot to map merchant categories between different e-commerce stores, allowing users to directly switch between equivalent or similar categories through merchant-to-system and system-to-merchant mapping data, while maintaining native categorization schemes and enabling scalability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If each e-commerce store maintains its own native product categorization scheme, then the user experience and product location ease are improved within each store, but the time and effort required to switch between stores and locate equivalent products increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a category mapping service as an intermediary between different e-commerce stores' categorization schemes. This service maintains a mapping between categories of different stores, allowing the system to translate category requests from one store to another store's equivalent category, thereby enabling seamless switching without requiring users to restart searches from the top level of each store's hierarchy
2Adaptability or versatility
If the multi-vendor marketplace provides a unified categorization scheme across all e-commerce stores, then the ease of switching between stores is improved, but the ability to maintain native merchant categorization schemes and adapt to different merchant needs deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the categorization system into two independent parts: the native categorization schemes of individual e-commerce stores and a unified category mapping layer. Each store maintains its own native categorization structure, while the mapping layer provides translation capabilities between different stores' categories. This segmentation allows both adaptability to merchant-specific needs and ease of switching between stores to coexist
3Measurement precision
If the system performs complete category mapping between all e-commerce stores, then the accuracy of product category equivalence is improved, but the system complexity and resource consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-establishing category mappings between e-commerce stores during system setup or background processing. The category mapping service maintains pre-computed mapping data that translates categories from one store to another store's equivalent categories. This preliminary mapping preparation eliminates the need for real-time complex analysis when users switch between stores, thereby maintaining high accuracy while reducing operational complexity
Data Source
AI summary
A multi-merchant portal that enables a user to access e-commerce stores is provided. Each e-commerce store has respective merchant categories browsable by the user at a customer device through the portal, each merchant category comprising products available for purchase from a respective merchant. In response to receiving a request from the customer device to switch access of the user browsing a selected merchant category of the first merchant in a first e-commerce store, to a second e-commerce store, the portal determines a system category corresponding to the selected merchant category using mapping data mapping merchant categories to system categories and then determines a destination merchant category of the second merchant in the second e-commerce store corresponding to the determined system category using mapping data mapping the system categories to the merchant categories. The portal switches user's access to the destination merchant category in the second e-commerce store.