Real-Time Merchandising System for Dynamic Offer Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing merchandising systems rely on mass paper or email communications, targeting consumers only when they read mail or browse the internet, failing to proactively engage consumers with timely and relevant offers.
Innovation Solution
A real-time merchandising system that utilizes mobile devices and digital signage to communicate consumer location data, enabling merchants to send dynamic, targeted offers to consumers on the move, allowing for immediate acceptance or rejection, and storing offers for later interaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If mass paper or email communications are used for merchandising offers, then the system is simple to implement, but the timeliness and relevance of offer delivery to consumers deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-establishes communication channels with consumer mobile devices and pre-processes location data, enabling offers to be delivered immediately when consumers are in relevant locations rather than waiting for mail delivery or email checking. This preliminary preparation of communication infrastructure resolves the contradiction by enabling timely delivery without requiring complex real-time processing at the moment of offer delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical delivery systems (physical mail) and batch electronic systems (email) with mobile device-based push notifications that leverage existing mobile communication infrastructure. This substitution enables real-time offer delivery by utilizing the always-on nature of mobile devices and their location services, achieving timeliness without proportionally increasing system complexity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If targeted offers are sent based on consumer location data, then the relevance and effectiveness of offers improves, but the complexity of data collection and processing increases
Solution Approach 1:
Consumer mobile devices autonomously perform location tracking and data processing locally, eliminating the need for complex centralized data collection infrastructure. The mobile device's operating system and GPS hardware self-manage the data generation and preliminary processing, providing accurate location-based targeting while keeping the merchant's system complexity low by receiving only finalized location data.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces mobile devices as intermediaries between consumers and merchant systems. Instead of merchants directly collecting and processing complex consumer data, mobile devices act as intermediaries that handle data processing locally and communicate only essential information back to merchants, thereby achieving accurate targeting without proportionally increasing overall system complexity.
3Loss of time
If real-time location tracking is implemented, then consumer engagement timeliness improves, but the loss of consumer privacy information increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system processes location data locally on mobile devices rather than transmitting detailed location histories to merchants. Only aggregated or anonymized location information relevant to offer delivery is communicated, maintaining response timeliness through local processing while minimizing privacy loss by keeping detailed location data on the consumer's device.
Solution Approach 2:
The system establishes consumer consent and preferences in advance, pre-defining what location data can be shared and under what conditions. This preliminary action enables real-time offer delivery within consented parameters while protecting privacy by preventing unauthorized data collection, thus resolving the contradiction between timely engagement and privacy protection.
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosure relates to a real-time merchandising system for the communication of offers and the acceptance or rejection of the communicated offers. The offers communicated may be based on the location of the merchandising system, the time of day and the user device that is in proximity of the system. The merchandising system may require no, or a minimum of, user interaction for an offer to be accepted or rejected or for the offer to expire. It may also be configured to track and analyze offer campaign effectiveness.