E-Commerce System with Personal Price Points

摘要

An ecommerce system is disclosed that uses personal price points (alone or in combination with other buying criteria) to trigger certain automated retail transactions. The system includes a customer interface engineered to allow a customer to either buy merchandise in accordance with retailer-defined selling criteria (including at least an “offered price point”) or to tag merchandise with customer-definable buying criteria (including at least an “acceptable price point”). Computational comparisons of the criteria are executed periodically to determine changes that may occur, for example, with sales, price reductions, and “rollbacks”. If a match or other suitable computed relationship is found, an automated retail transaction—such as the transmission of an electronic notification to a customer's email address or smartphone number—is executed.

主权项

1. A method for using personal buying criteria in a retailer-operated e-commerce website, the e-commerce website coded to sell merchandise according to retailer-definable selling criteria, the selling criteria comprising at least an offered price point, the method comprising the steps of:
recording the retailer-definable selling criteria at a data storage facility; providing a customer interface on said website enabling a customer to buy said merchandise at the offered price point, the customer interface also enabling the customer to tag merchandise with customer-definable buying criteria, the buying criteria comprising at least an acceptable price point; recording the customer-definable buying criteria at the data storage facility; executing periodically a computational comparison of the retailer-definable selling criteria and the customer-definable buying criteria; and transmitting an alert to the customer as a function of said computational comparison.