METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN BUYERS AND VENDORS

摘要

A method of and corresponding apparatus for facilitating buyer-vendor communications is described. A request from a buyer for vendor information corresponding to a selected category from a list of categories is received (180). In response to the request for vendor information, a vendor matching list for the selected category is returned (182). The returned vendor matching list includes communication options (184) available to the buyer relative to one or more of the listed vendors (182). A message corresponding to selected communication options is transmitted over the network to the selected vendors. The message can be associated with a set of one or more buyer-defined parameters specifying how responses to the message are to be delivered to the buyer. When responses to the message are received from at least one of the selected suppliers, the buyer-defined parameters associated with the message are consulted and the response is processed in accordance with the user-defined parameters.