| 摘要 |
Online shopping is a well known technology. Due to increasing time pressures & logistical issues people are trying to move away from going to the physical store to buy everyday goods. However, currently there is no unique and novel system available to customers that can replicate in exact terms their physical shopping experience. While standard online shopping technology addresses the needs of customers who have a specific product in mind, they fall short of the general shoppers who go to the store to browse, explore and select items on display in the aisles of the store and take decisions on what they need. A typical example of this would be grocery stores. Grocery shopping in particular is usually least planned, involves physically walking the cart through the different aisles of the shopping mart and then deciding what product is needed at home such as food, vegetables, fruits, etc which the grocery shopper readily picks up and drops in the shopping cart. This is the normal grocery shopping experience. Shoppers are also keen on walking through the aisles of tech stores and discover different gadgets on display and buy what they feel interested in. The purpose of this invention is to take the "Exact" experience of physically walking through the aisles and selecting the items to purchase in a virtual world using online realtime streaming video & associated software + hardware such as video cameras, user interfaces such as PC, hand held mobile devices, virtual reality devices etc. The online shopper can virtually traverse the aisles of the physical store as if he/she is physically present in that space, virtually pick and drop items from and to the cart, check prices, check what's available on display in realtime and make purchase decisions. The invention integrates key modern technologies especially video streaming into the buying process therefore making it as real and as representative of the actual physical world as possible. There are other added benefits of this invention in terms of integration with online payment systems, realtime comparisons between the nutritional values of products without having to read the fine print on the back, scheduling pick-ups and deliveries as appropriate for the buyers' needs. As a last benefit, since the entire experience is done online, multiple people in different physical locations can collaborate over the video stream to steer the buyer's decision towards the best product, as well as share the same space in a realtime virtual world, without the need of being physically there. |
