NL1041672B1 - SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR FACILITATING SMART SHOPPING, BASED ON (AGGREGATED) DIGITIZED PERSONAL COLLECTION INFORMATION AND METADATA - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention generally relates to systems and methods for facilitating smart and efficiënt shopping of articles (off- and online). For example: a consumer wants to buy an item at a point of sale of a brick-and-mortar store or online merchant, based on the shops available goods and the customer preference of that moment. In most situations, a consumer doesn't have his or her Personal Collection (including metadata such as colours, numbers (per type), ages, ratings etc), associated Preferences and accurate Measurements on top of mind. In many occasions the merchant tries to sell primarily the available stock: taking the store's articles as a starting point, not the consumer need (!). This way of selling can be time consuming, irritating, cumbersome, costly, environmentally unfriendly (overlap and/ or misfit with articles at home) and also reduces the time and energy to shop for other, possibly higher valued items. Timely (aggregated) information exchanged between computer systems and networks facilitate the tasks of buying, selling and transferring goods and services in retail and other (on- and offline) marketplaces. It would therefore be desirable to provide improved systems and methods for smart shopping, when practical using the customer's Personal Collection, Preferences and accurate Measurements in order to optimise the shopping experience.

Description

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR FACILITATING SMART SHOPPING, BASED ON AGGREGATED) DIGITIZED PERSONAL COLLECTION INFORMATION AND METADATA

Hein Franken and Jorrit van Groenewoud

Background

Field of the Invention

The invention generally relates to systems and methods for facilitating smart and efficient shopping or articles (off- and online).

Related Art

Timely aggregated information exchanged between computer systems and networks facilitate the tasks of buying, selling and transferring goods and services in retail and other (online and offline) marketplaces.

Example 1: a consumer wants to buy an item at a point of sale or a brick-and-mortar store or online merchant, based on the shops available goods and the customer preference of that moment. In most situations, a consumer does not have his private Personal Collection (including metadata such as colors, numbers (per type), ages, ratings etc), associated Preferences and accurate Measurements available. In many occasions the merchant tries to sell primarily the available stock: taking the store's articles as a starting point, not the consumer need (!).

This way of selling can be time consuming, irritating, numbered, costly, environmentally unfriendly (overlap and / or misfit with articles at home) and also reduce the time and energy to shop for other, possibly higher valued items.

Example 2: a customer wants to buy an item at a point of sale or a brick-and-mortar store or online merchant. Nowadays, customer has to visit different sites (with different layouts, which can make it hard to find the item) on his (physical) shopping route in order to check if the shop has the preferred item (ie trousers; size: 53, color : gray). In many occasions the trouser (size 53, gray) is not available, findable nor orderable at the merchant.

This way of buying can be time consuming, irritating, numbered, costly, environmentally unfriendly and also reducing the time and energy to shop for other, possibly higher valued items.

It would therefore be desirable to provide improved systems and methods for smart shopping, using the customer's Personal Collection, Preferences and accurate Measurements in order to optimize the shopping experience.

We greatly appreciate the formulations in patent WO 2015/116323 or Networked Systems helping customers to buy smarter. However, they seem to focus on smart repetitive predictable low cost mundane purchases (eg cafe latte or toilet paper) where our invention on capturing users complete private Personal Collections and have our algorithm calculate how an online website can be simplified and optimized in a single private session in order to enable smart shopping.

Brief description of the figures

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an illustrative networked system and methods suitable for implementing a process for smart Personal Collection shopping according to an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a schematic drawing of the structure of a Personal Collection according to an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a photo of the user's complete collection of shoes, sorted in the prescribed Personal Collection rainbow color alignment, photographed in a prescribed way according to an embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram example of a part of the Personal Collection showing all shoes in possession of a user including metadata such as color, remarks about how well they feel, purchase date, rating, willingness to sell the item according to an edition.

FIG. 5 describe an example or an aggregation of the articles information including an overall customer overview, giving a merchant a strong basis to quickly get the right insights of / advices for a specific customer.

FIG. 6 describes a Personalized web shop session, demonstrating the customization of the web shop only for this specific consumer relevant articles (e.g. sizes, colors, recommendations)

Fig 7 Describe a Personalized web shop session, demonstrating the function of the diode when copying the information items to the personalized web shop session.

Detailed description [0001] Examples of applications or apparatuses and methods according to the present invention are described in this section. These examples are provided solely to add context and aid in the understanding of the invention. It will thus be apparent to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In other instances, well-known process steps have not been described in detail in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present invention. Other applications are possible, such as the following examples should not be tasks as limiting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specific expiry of the present invention. Although these are described in sufficient detail to enable one skilled in the art to practice the invention, it is understood that these examples are not limiting, such that other may be used, and changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Devices, systems and methods are provided for performing transactions such as Personal Collection shopping cart and / or smart shopping list transactions. In various particular types, the devices, systems or methods can involve one or more devices in communication over a network. Such devices, systems, and methods can facilitate the generation and maintenance of Personal Collection and personal shopping lists.

While many of the various examples disclosed focus on particular aspects regarding the smart Personal Collection shopping, it will be understood that the various inventive principles and described disclosed can be applied to other types of transactions and arrangements as well. For example, a purchase that is performed in person using an online web shop may utilize one or more of the aspects and features found in the various systems and methods provided.

"References throughout the specification to" "various models," "some models," "one model," "an model," "various models," "one example," or "some examples" means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment or example is included in at least one embodiment.

Thus, appearances or these are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more exp.

According to an embodiment, a computer program product can include a non-transitory machine readable medium. The non-transitory machine readable medium can have computer readable and executable code for instructing one or more processors to perform any of the methods disclosed.

Beginning with FIG. 1, a block diagram is shown of a networked system 100 suitable for implementing a process for facilitating digitized Personal Collection shopping according to an embodiment. Networked system 100 may include or implement a variety of servers and / or software components that operate to perform various electronic commerce transactions or processes such as personal account collection editing or processes. Exemplary servers may include, for example, standalone and enterprise-class servers operating a server OS such as a MICROSOFT® OS, a UNIX® OS, a LINUX® OS, or other suitable server-based OS. It can be appreciated that the servers illustrated in Figs. 1 may be deployed in other ways and that the operations performed and / or the services provided by such servers may be combined or separated for a given implementation and may be performed by a greater number or fewer number of servers. One or more servers may be operated and / or maintained by the same or different entities.

System 100 may include a user device 108, a merchant server 110 and a merchant device 118 or a merchant 111, a Personal Collection Service Provider server 120 and a manufacturer server 130 in communication over a network 140. Service provider server 120 may maintained by an independent Personal Collection Service Provider 121, such as Shoegl in The Netherlands. A user 101, such as a sender or consumer, utilizes user device 108 or merchant device 118 to perform a transaction such as a smart Personal Collection shopping advice using Personal Collection Service Provider server 120 and the single private session running in Service App 127.

A merchant 111 may utilize a merchant device 118 to initiate a smart Personal Collection transaction after the user has logged into his user account 122, receive a transaction approval request, or reply to the request. Note that transaction, refers to any suitable action performed using either the merchant device 118 or the user device 108, including transfer of information, display of information, purchases, sales, online listings, smart list transaction, prefilled order transactions, etc. Although only one merchant server is shown, a variety of merchant servers may be utilized if the user is purchasing products or services from multiple merchants.

User device 108, merchant server 110, merchant device 118, Personal Collection Service Provider server 120, and a manufacturer server 130 may each include one or more processors, memories, and other appropriate components for executing instructions such as program code and / or data stored on one or more computer readable mediums to implement the various applications, data, and steps described. For example, such instructions may be stored in one or more computer readable media such as memories or data storage devices internal and / or external to various components of system 100, and / or accessible over network 140.

Network 140 may be implemented as a single network or a combination of multiple networks. For example, in various models, network 140 may include the Internet or one or more intranets, landline networks, wireless networks, and / or other appropriate types of networks.

Merchant device 118 or user device 108 may be implemented using any appropriate hardware and software configured for wired and / or wireless communication over network 140. For example, in one embodiment, merchant device 118 or user device 108 may be implemented as a personal computer (PC), a smart phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), laptop computer, and / or other types of computing devices capable of transmitting and / or receiving data, such as an iPad ™ from Apple ™.

Merchant device 118 or user device 108 may include one or more browser applications 102 or 112 which may be used, for example, to provide a convenient interface to permit user 101 to browse information available over network 140. For example, in one version, browser application 102 or 112 may be implemented as a web browser configured to view information available over the Internet, such as a user account for editing one's Personal Collection and / or merchant sites for viewing and purchasing articles and services. User device 108 may also include one or more toolbar applications 103 which may be used, for example, to provide client-side processing for performing desired tasks in response to operations selected by user 101. In one edition, toolbar application 103 may display a user interface in connection with browser application 102.

User device 108 may further include other applications 106 as may be desired in particular extended to provide desired features to user device 108. For example, other applications 106 may include security applications for implementing client-side security features, programmatic client applications for interfacing with appropriate application programming interfaces (APIs) over network 140, or other types of applications.

Applications 106 may also include email, texting, voice and IM applications that allow user 101 to send and receive emails, calls, and texts through network 140, as well as applications that enable the user to communicate, transfer information, make payments , manage smart shopping lists, and otherwise utilize a smart wallet through the payment provider as discussed above. User device 108 may include one or more user identifiers 105 which may be implemented, for example, as operating system registry entries, cookies associated with browser application 102, identifiers associated with hardware or user device 108, or other appropriate identifiers, such as used for payment / user / device authentication. In one embodiment, user identifier 105 may be used by a Personal Collection Service Provider to associate user 101 with a particular account maintained by the Service Provider. A communications application 104, with associated interfaces, enable user device 108 to communicate within system 100.

User device 108 or merchant device 118 may also include components and applications that generate and / or display a computer readable code based on a smart shopping list. For example, user device 108 or merchant device 118 may include a touch screen that displays information such as a scannable code to user 101 and receives user input from user 101.

User device 108 may also collect location data using Global Positioning System (GPS) circuitry to identify a location or user device 108. Other means for collecting location data, such as WiFi devices, Near-Field Communication (NFC) devices, or the like also may be included in user device 108 for determining a location or user device 108. Thus, user device 108 may determine a current location or user device 108 based on the collected location data. In another embodiment, user device 108 may send the location data to Personal Collection Service provider server 120 and service provider server 120 may determine a current location or user device 108 based on the location data.

Merchant server 110 may be maintained, for example, by a merchant or seller such as merchant 111 offering various products and / or services. The merchant 111 may have a physical point-of-sale (POS) store front at which one or more code scanners such as a code scanner 116 and one or more shopping carts 117 are located. However, this is merely illustrative. In some, shopping cart 117 may be a virtual shopping cart on a merchant website or an internal virtual shopping cart such as a purchase order for a user.

Merchant may be a participating merchant who has a merchant account ID 119 and 123 with the Personal Collection Service Provider. Merchant server 110 may be used for POS or online purchases and transactions. Generally, merchant server 110 may be maintained by anyone or any entity that receives money, which includes charities as well as banks and retailers.

Merchant server 110 may include a database of 113 identifying available products (including digital goods) and / or services (eg, collectively referred to as items) which may be made available for viewing and purchase by user 101. Fine, merchant server 110 also may include a marketplace application 114 which may be configured to serve information over network 140 to browser 112 or merchant device 118 or user device 108. In one embodiment, user 101 may interact with marketplace application 114 through browser applications over network 140 in order to view various articles or services identified in database 113.

Merchant server 110 may also include a checkout application 115 which may be configured to facilitate the purchase by user 101 or articles or services online or at a physical POS or store front. Checkout application 115 may be configured to accept payment information from or on behalf of user 101 through a payment service provider over Network 140.

Personal Collection Service Provider server 120 also maintains a variety of user accounts 122 and merchant accounts 123, each of which may include account information 124 associated with consumers including their private Personal Collection 126. For example, account information 124 may include private financial information of users or devices such as account numbers, passwords, device identifiers, user names, phone numbers, credit card information, bank information, or other financial information which may be used to facilitate online transactions by user 101. Account information may also include smart Personal Collection shopping lists and / or preferences or settings for generating and maintaining smart Personal Collection shopping lists. Personal Collection Service Provider application 127 may be configured to facilitate the single private personified webshop experience without breaching the privacy of the consumer's Personal Collection 126. This is achieved by allowing the merchant after payment or the Click to the Personal Collection Service Provider to copy the relevant content of his website from database 113 to a temporary not by the merchant accessible private session 127 either on server 120 or 110, which is immediately customized using the privacy sensitive Personal Collection data 126 of the user 101 or purchases across various webshops including competitors of the merchant 111. With the personified webshop experience, user 101 reaches faster than before a decision to purchase a product, see Fig.6. At purchase the check-out procedure or the merchant app 115 is followed. After payment 1) the user Personal Collection 126 is updated with this article; 2) the temporary customized session is deleted ensuring the privacy of the Personal Collection 126.

Personal Collection Service Provider 121 may be consulted by Manufacturer 131 on the upcoming demand from the population of users 101 and the statistical data of their average Personal Collections, average metadata or rating and age of articles etc.

In the enrollment of the subscription between the Merchant 111 and the Personal Collection Service Provider 121, great care is given to the data modeling between the Merchant's 111 Electronic Resource Planning infrastructure (eg article description database structure 113, column width, color coding, date and time etc. and the Personal Collection data architecture 126 as depicted in Fig. 2. This is a bespoke IT project per Merchant 111 that must be conducted before users can experience a (automated) upload of their Personal Collections 126.

After setting up his User Account 122, the user 101 starts with completing his Personal Collection 126. When his Communication App 104 (eg a keyboard and display) on his User Device 108 allows him to type in a certain (meta data about ) Article 1 bought, including the Merchant name 208, Merchant city 209, Brand of the article (eg Hilfiger) 202, Color 203, Size 204, optionally remarks “eg really fitting well, worst purchase ever ”, Rating 206, purchase date 207. During this data entry the Personal Collection Service Provider server 120 checks the status of the associated Merchant 111 subscription in his Merchant Accounts 123.

In case merchant 111 has put the purchased articles of user 101 into his database 113, and currently has a subscription with Personal Collection Service Provider 121 including the data transformation service, the Personal Collection server 120 originates a pop-up screen at the User Device 108: "The merchant 111 you just selected allows you to upload your digitally purchased articles into his shop from his database 113 into your Personal Collection account 126, do you agree yes / no?".

In case the user selects NO, no articles will be copied into his personal collection 126.

In case the user selects YES, the information of the Merchant database 113 or user 101 will be copied into the user's private Personal Collection 126, hence facilitating the population of his Personal Collection. In the case the Merchant 111 has not yet a Personal Collection subscription with provider 121, the User 105 can manually upload his articles into his Personal Collection 126.

A possible way to manually upload an overview of your Personal Collection is to make a picture of all your articles in your possession on a bed with the blankets removed, see Figs. 3

In order to quickly interpret / compare collections of Users 101 by professional staff of Merchant 111, a color order is proposed following the rainbow colors: Starting left behind with the oldest red article 301, if the User 101 has a newer red article that is placed in front of the oldest one 302, following the colors Red, yellow, white harrow 303, green, brown 304 (oldest), 305, 306, black 308 (oldest and 309, blue 312).

FIG. 4 shows an excel example of a part of the Personal Collection of all the shoes in the possession of a user including metadata such as color, remarks about how well they feel, purchase date, rating, willingness to sell the item according to an edition.

The next part of the invention describes the important rules that have been managed in order to safeguard the privacy of the user. Each merchant has given a merchant account ID code, including a list of product codes 201 related to the article categories or his shop. E.g. a shop selling only shoes has only been activated by the Personal Collection Provider product code 01, shirts 02 etc. According to an explanation of the privacy of the Users 101 Personal Collection 126 must be respected at all times. This means that protected with username and password, the User 101 must always have access to all details or his Personal Collection 126.

This means that a Merchant 111, having a subscription with Personal Collection Service Provider 121, will only be allowed to see an encapsulated view of the Users Personal Collection 126:

All articles purchased by user 101 in his (web) shop or shop chain are fully visible;

All articles bought at a competing shop or web shop are not shown in full detail, but only in aggregated form, see Fig. 5.

The anonymized (no Merchant Name, city, price) selection of articles with the highest rating and highest age are visible.

What is claimed is: 1. A computer based system and method, including:

An internet connected system and website and / or app that stores account information or multiple users; including the users Digitized Personal Collection or fashion / good articles including metadata such as purchase date, shop, rating, sizes etc .; - An internet connected system and website and / or app that stores account information of multiple merchants and allowing them to purchase temporary single private shopping experiences for their shop visitors combining with a unique algorithm their own inventory with the private Personal Collection data; - Algorithm that calculates metadata from someone's Personal Collection (or purchases across various webshops including competitors or the merchant) that can simplify and focus the standard inventory or a webshop to the specific user visiting in a single private session, deleting all contents after check-out . - bespoke software that - using the users Personal Collection - calculates the most likely to be replaced items by new purchases; - With the personified webshop experience, the consumer reaches faster than before a decision to purchase a product. At purchase the check-out procedure or the merchant webshop is followed.

After payment 1) his Personal Collection is updated with this article; 2) the temporary customized session has been deleted. - bespoke software for the merchant to add the digitally purchased article into the Personal Collection of the customer; - Wherein the computer based system is operated by an independent Personal Collection Service Provider whose interest in the use of the consumer items includes none of ownership, operation, service, maintenance, legal regulation, manufacture, distribution, and insurance of the item, and further, the data based upon the analysis is generated as a paid service to a requesting merchant in order to increase the conversion rate of his store. Without breaching the privacy of the consumer's Personal Collection. 2. The system of claim 1, where the user is helped filling in all the articles / contracts in his house / wardrobe into the Personal Collection by a website mechanism by frequently visited merchants, offering pre-configured sold article data, where the user only have to click yes to fill his Personal Collection; 3. The system of claim 1, where the user sees an by instruction videos to facilitate the data input exercise or how the minimal characteristics of digitized article information including metadata, as well as rainbow color article placement or Personal Collections can be uploaded; 4. The system of claim 1, where the single private customized session is paid per time period (e.g., the merchant pays one click every X minutes); 5. The system of claim 1, the merchant and the user can add an expected fitting article or the merchant into the wish list or the user account, allowing the merchant to send the user an e-mail / sms / advertisement etc when the article is in stock; 6. The system of claim 1, at least one software routine is further configured to calculate after the user's log-in, merchant-recommended items for the user, for example by using the temporary copied website environment to show other articles that fit eg existing articles in the consumers Personal Collection that likes and needs to be replaced because of aging. 7. The system of claim 1, bespoke software generates for the customer an overview of merchants who have the requested item in stock, with an optimized shopping route; 8. The system of claim 1, bespoke software for the merchant helps the customer to compose a customer's outfit, based on customer's collection and combined with the merchant's collection (based on Rubicon principle; Fig 5); 9. The system of claim 1, bespoke software sends evaluation inquiries to users after a purchase, at preformatted time stamps. Results are uploaded in users account (and optionally shared with followers). Evaluation is both product as well as service related; 10. The system of claim 1, while bespoke software allows the user to sell / rent an article in his Personal Collection via the "Ebay" (Marketplace) interface (by easily selecting the article and choosing the preferred action); 11. The system of claim 1, the Manufacturer pays for anonymized marketing data from the users metadata aggregated by the Personal Collection Service Provider.

Claims (11)

1. A computer-based system and method, consisting of: A system, website and / or app that is connected via the internet and that stores account information of multiple customers; including their complete digitized personal collection of fashion / consumer items, including metadata such as brand, purchase date, store where you purchased the item, your rating of the item, color, size information, preferences etc; - A system, website and / or app connected via the internet which stores account information from multiple stores / web stores and which makes it possible to improve the shopping experience of this customer through an algorithm in a temporary private session with a customer that the stock is offered in such a way that it is tailored to the preferences and collection of this customer (digitized Personal Collection). - Custom software that, based on the personal preferences and collection of the customer (including purchases from other parties), calculates which part (relevance) and how the stock of the web store can best be shown to the specific customer during the temporary and protected web session with the customer. With the aim of achieving an optimal shopping experience and conversion, whereby all content is removed from the temporary session after starting the check out procedure. - Custom software that calculates from the personal collection which item is most likely to be replaced by a new purchase soon; - A.h.v. the personalized web session, the consumer reaches the decision time to buy a product faster than before. From the moment of purchase (or the start of the check out), the check out procedure is followed via the regular site of the webshop. After settlement, the customer's digital personal collection will be updated with the purchased item in succession 1. The temporary session and its content will be deleted - Custom software which enables the retailer to purchase the item immediately after purchase. digitally update the customer's personal collection; - Where the computer-based system is controlled by an independent legal entity (Personal Collection Service Provider), periodically tested by the government for compliance with privacy. Whose interest in the customer's articles is not in the ownership, use, maintenance, manufacture, distribution or insurance of the article; but where the data based on the insights / analyzes on the personal collections is supplied as a service to stores and web stores for the purpose of increasing the conversion factor. Without wanting to damage the privacy rights of consumers and their personal digital collection in any way. The system of Claim 1, wherein the customer is helped to enter all his (previous) items / contracts from his personal collection into his account through a website mechanism where stores that the customer has previously visited, asking whether the Purchase information from these stores automatically (with retroactive effect) may be read into his personal Collection. The system of Claim 1, wherein instructional videos showing how the customer, e.g. using a standardized rainbow-color array of items, can digitally input his items including metadata and promotions (how do you carry the item, do you want to be there) from, etc); The system of Claim 1, wherein the store pays per temporary web session for - after the customer's permission - personalizing the website, e.g. the information from the Personal Collection and preferences of the customer (e.g. 1 click per X min); The system of Claim 1, wherein the store and / or the customer can add an appropriate item in the "wish list" of the customer account, so that the store (s) can send an email / sms / advertisement to the customer as soon as the item is available / a suitable alternative is available (based on a frequency specified by the customer); The system of Claim 1, wherein at least one software routine is programmed to generate articles recommended by the store based on the user's personal profile. For example, by using the temporary copied website to display other articles that are related to existing articles in the Personal Collection of the customer or that fit within his preferences, and have to be replaced due to age. The system of Claim 1, wherein custom software generates an overview of stores for the customer, where items from his wish list are immediately available and / or can be ordered. Including optimal walking route, including stock and prices (see also the aforementioned example; search for gray trousers, size 53); The system of Claim 1, wherein custom software helps the store to generate (clothing) advice based on the collections of the customer and the store (Rubicon principle; see Figs 5 and 6); The system of Claim 1, wherein custom software sends evaluation requests to the customer after the purchase, according to adjustable time intervals. Results are processed in the metadata of the customer's personal collection (and optionally shared on social media). Evaluations are related to both product and service of the store; The system of Claim 1, wherein custom software helps the customer to access his "old" or rarely used articles via e.g. sell a Marketplace interface (by selecting the item in his account and pressing the "sell" promotion); The system of Claim 1, wherein the manufacturer pays the Personal Collection Service Provider for obtaining anonymous personal collection information, preferences and / or dimensions from customers for marketing activities.