Shared Catalog Interception for Product Variety Expansion
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Solution Overview
Problem
Online shopping platforms face low conversion rates of potential buyers to actual clients due to limited product variety, unattractive transaction terms, language barriers, and other factors, particularly affecting small traders with limited resources and branding issues.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system that intercepts item search requests and directs them to a shared catalog across multiple websites, presenting results in a uniform format, allowing users to find items from various websites, including physical stores, and enabling revenue sharing between involved websites.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If a small online trader maintains a limited local catalog due to resource constraints, then storage costs and stock costs are reduced, but the product variety available to customers is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the local catalog of a small online trader with a shared catalog accessible across multiple websites. This allows the small trader to offer products from other websites without maintaining separate inventory, effectively combining resources to expand product variety while avoiding the complexity of managing multiple catalogs independently
Solution Approach 2:
The shared catalog system provides multi-functionality by serving multiple websites and traders simultaneously. A single catalog infrastructure supports numerous traders, allowing each to access a universal pool of products without duplicating storage or management systems
2Productivity
If a small online trader invests heavily in branding and marketing to attract potential buyers, then website traffic increases, but the conversion rate remains low due to limited product variety
Solution Approach 1:
By merging with the shared catalog, the small trader's website can present a much broader product variety to the traffic it attracts through branding and marketing efforts, directly improving the conversion rate by meeting customer demands that previously led to lost sales
3Quantity of substance
If an online trading website expands its local catalog to include more products, then product variety increases, but storage space requirements and stock costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The shared catalog acts as an intermediary that provides access to extensive product variety without requiring physical storage at each individual website. The small trader's website can offer products from the shared catalog without actually storing or holding inventory of those items locally
Data Source
AI summary
A computer implemented method of enhancing a response to a query for an item at a website, comprising:(a) Obtaining, at a website server, a request from a client terminal for retrieving information of a requested item.(b) Detecting presence or absence of the requested item in a local catalog of the visited website.(c) Presenting, in case of presence, a first presentation of the requested item at a GUI displayed at client terminal.(d) Issuing, in case of absence, a search query for the requested item in a shared catalog comprising a plurality of offered items available from another websites.(e) Receiving a response from the shared catalog. The response comprises result item(s) from the plurality of offered items corresponding to the requested item.(f) Presenting a second presentation of the result item(s) at the GUI. The first presentation and the second presentation share a common visual format.