JP2002117181A - Method and system for managing form for sales promotion - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method and a system for reducing costs by facilitating the centralization of application forms. SOLUTION: The form for quiz or present application or questionnaire answer provided in a store such as convenience store is acquired and a client, who enters and sets required items on the form, hands the form over to the store dealing with the form. In the store, forms received from clients are collected and a bundle constituted by adding forms with information specifying the store is delivered to a center 10. In the center 10, the forms are read as image data by an image processing system 101 and the character recognition or image extraction of a prescribed item in the image data is performed and registered on a database 102.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method and system for managing quizzes, present applications, and collection and delivery of questionnaire sheets, which are used at stores such as convenience stores and used for sales promotion of products.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, at a convenience store, a supermarket, or the like, a quiz, a gift application form, or a questionnaire sheet prepared by a product provider for a product campaign or the like is placed in a store (customers are free to take them home. Good), a business form that collects papers applied by customers and uses them for sales promotion of products, collection of customer information, etc. has been established.

[0003] These sheets are pre-printed with information on a prize, which is a lottery to the applicant, and a postcard-sized criterion line is printed (or perforated) on the sheet. In addition, as an application condition, for example, a label (barcode label) of a packaging box or the like of a purchased product, or an instruction to attach a receipt or the like is described.

[0004] Customers who apply, etc., follow the instructions on the form,
Make settings such as attaching the receipt or label attached to the product to the designated place on the paper, etc., and further write the address, name, gender, age, telephone number, occupation, purchase shop name, desired gift, etc. in advance on the paper In the printed entry,
After filling in the necessary information, put a postage stamp on a postcard or put it in a sealed letter (again, also put a stamp),
By submitting to a post, you can apply by mailing it to a post-office box or the like of the merchandise provider or a paper collection / delivery agency (the address is pre-printed in the postcard section of the paper).

[0005] The merchandise provider or the agency receiving the mailed form delivers the present (prize) to the customer who has reached the grade by lottery or the like, and the customer information (address, name, Age, phone number, occupation,
The purchase store name and, in some cases, the purchased merchandise) are input to the database.

[0006] Information stored in the database is used for sales promotion activities such as direct mail transmission on the product provider side, and questionnaire responses from customers are used for product planning and sales strategies on the product provider side. .

[0007]

However, the conventional paper collection / delivery management method has the following problems.

That is, when a customer applies for a product provider using an application form provided at a convenience store or the like,
Because of the mailing, the customer must send a stamp (postcard postage amount of 5
That is, you have to buy and paste a zero-yen stamp, and post it to the post.

[0009] At present, in the city, there are many convenience stores of various companies opened as the convenience store is often closer than the post office and the post. There are many (usually a convenience store in a prominent place), but it is often difficult to know where the post is (posts are less prominent than a convenience store). And I often go to convenience stores, but the work of purchasing and pasting stamps and posting them to posts is inevitably troublesome. This tendency is strong in the layer.

Certainly, the collection and delivery of paper by mail has the merit that it can be delivered to the product provider at a uniform rate from anywhere in the country, but for customers residing in metropolitan areas, 5
A stamp price of 0 yen is more expensive than an email or the like. For example, if you apply for 10 sheets of paper, a stamp price of 500 yen is required, and if you have expired a stamp, you have to go to a stamp. For this reason, many customers are not interested in the application form deployed at convenience stores,
It is also a factor preventing the increase in the number of applications.

[0011] The problems on the customer side when mailing the application form are as described above. On the other hand, on the product provider side having prepared the application form, the name provided on the collected application form is
It is necessary to input information such as an address and age from a keyboard by an operator or the like and register the information in a database.

Accordingly, the present invention has been made based on the recognition of the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for facilitating collection of application papers and reducing costs.

[0013]

According to the present invention for achieving the above object, a customer who obtains an application or answer sheet prepared for sales promotion, fills in the necessary items on the sheet, and sets Handing over the paper to a store handling the paper, the store collects and bundles a plurality of papers received from the customer, and delivers a bundle to which a paper with information specifying the store is added to the management center. In the management center, information on the paper is read by an image reading device, and necessary information is registered in a database. In the management center, the paper is read as image data by an image reading device, and a predetermined item in the image data is subjected to character recognition or image extraction and registered in the database.

[0014]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described. The present invention, in one of its preferred embodiments,
The customer who has obtained the application form and questionnaire form for sales promotion of the product provider, which is provided at stores such as convenience stores, fills in the required items such as the address and name on the form, attaches the product label, etc. Is set, and the sheet is delivered to the nearest convenience store handling the sheet.

[0015] The convenience store collects the sheets delivered from the customer, bundles them together with the sheet to which the information for specifying the convenience store is added, and delivers the bundle to the management center on the merchandise provider side.

The management center reads paper information as image data using an image processing system, and character recognition or image extraction of necessary items and automatically registers them in a database.

[0017] A telephone, F
The prize may be notified by AX, e-mail, or the like, and the prize may be delivered to the customer or may be delivered at a convenience store designated by the customer.

In the present invention, an image processing system is installed in a convenience store, a paper brought by a customer is read by the image processing system, necessary items are recognized by characters or images are extracted, and the extracted data is sent to a management center. You may make it transmit.

[0019]

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 2A, a gift application form is distributed to the convenience store 2 from the management center 10, and the customer 1 who has acquired the form (which can be taken back and taken free of charge) provided at the convenience store 2 For example, enter the name, gender, age, address, telephone number, etc. in each field, and follow the instructions on the form, and label the purchased product (for example, a barcode label or mark attached to the product) or receipt, etc. Then, bring the paper 3 to the nearest convenience store 2 that handles paper.

A store clerk (not shown) may receive the application form received from the customer 1 and, at that time, perform a simple check such as omission of entry or whether a label or the like is correctly attached. For example, when a clerk who receives the paper finds that the application label, that is, the label of the product is not affixed, the customer is notified to that effect, thereby avoiding collection and delivery of invalid paper.

At the convenience store, a plurality of sheets received from the customer are bundled together, and a sheet on which a barcode is printed in advance as information for identifying the store of the convenience store is attached to the table.
And deliver it by a delivery car or the like. It is assumed that a contract between the product provider that delivers the product to the convenience store and the convenience store operator is appropriately made for the delivery and other costs.

In the management center 10 where the sheets are collected from the convenience store, the image processing system 100 automatically reads the information of the bundled sheets in order and extracts necessary information. The host computer 101, which has received the information extracted by the image processing system 100, stores the personal information such as name and address in the database 1 in association with the store information (recognized by the image processing system 100) on the cover of the bundle.
Register in 02. At this time, for the user who has already been registered in the database 102, the classification of purchased products, application history information and the like are updated.

The present application form includes at least two or three types of barcode information for specifying a handwritten space such as a name and an address, a mark for specifying gender, a store, a type of the present paper, and the like (image, Mark, bar code), the image processing system 100
Has the configuration shown in FIG. As an image processing system of this type, an image processing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. 10-18079 (Japanese Patent No. 3061748) is used.

Referring to FIG. 4, the image processing system 100 includes an optical image reading device 110 that reads image information of a sheet as image data in a lump, and converts the image information composed of the image data into a sheet based on the position coordinates. A plurality of areas corresponding to the format (for example, FIG. 2
(A) Name, address, age, occupation, etc.), and the characters in each area are recognized by the character recognition means 120. The cover (store identification information) of the bundle of sheets is read as image data, and the barcode is recognized by the barcode recognition means 140 to identify the store. further,
In the gender column of the paper and the designation column of the desired present, when the information is designated by a mark other than a character, or when the information is designated by a mark sheet method of filling black, the designated item is recognized by the mark recognizing means 130.

When a product label, receipt, or the like is affixed to the paper as an application condition, the label information is recognized as an image, and a bar code or the like of the product packaging is affixed to the paper as the application condition. If the barcode information is recognized, the barcode information is
Recognized by

The information (text or image data) extracted and recognized by the image processing system 100 is stored in the database 102 via the host computer 101.

Although the table structure of the database 102 is arbitrary, as customer information, customer ID (generated by the host computer 101), name, address, telephone number (mail address), age, gender, occupation, purchased product information The application history information is registered in association with the store information of the convenience store from which the customer has handed over the paper.

The merchandise provider distributes sales promotion direct mails and the like from the information in the database 102.

In one embodiment of the present invention, if the image data (characters input by handwriting) obtained by reading the name written on the application form cannot be recognized and converted into a text code, the image data is converted to a text code. You may make it register in a database as it is.

When the destination information (name, address) is printed by the printer based on the information in the database 102 when the product is delivered to the customer who has received the present, if the character recognition is correctly performed, the printer executes the text processing. The data (2 byte kana kanji code) will be printed,
If the image processing system 100 cannot correctly recognize handwritten characters on paper, image data (image data of characters handwritten by a customer) stored in a database is printed as a destination.

With this configuration, it is unnecessary for the operator to input the paper information from the keyboard at the center 10 for collecting and distributing the application paper, and the handwritten character information on the paper cannot be recognized by the image processing system. In this case, the operator does not need to perform typing and correction.

When the registration information of the database is displayed on the terminal, the data registered in the database as an image is also displayed on the terminal as an image. , A lottery winner can be recognized.

It is needless to say that the customer information registered in the database as image data may be edited from the terminal and stored as a text code.

The management center may be provided for each product provider, or one management center may be provided in common for a plurality of product providers.

When a management center is provided for each product provider, the host computer 101 of the management center may be a host computer of the product provider, and the management center is provided with the image processing system 100 and the host of the product provider. It may be configured to be connected for communication with a computer.

For example, when one management center (collection and delivery center) is provided in common for a plurality of product providers such as company A, company B, and company C, when the application form is read by the image processing system 10, Recognizes the printed product provider information (barcode information), sorts application information for each product provider, and transmits the customer information extracted from the paper to the computer of the relevant product provider via a network. You may do so.

For customers who have won lotteries, telephone, F
The prize may be notified by AX, e-mail, or the like, and the prize may be delivered to the customer or may be delivered at a convenience store designated by the customer.

Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described. FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a second embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 4, in this embodiment, different from Example, the image processing system 100, provided in a convenience store 2 ₁ to 2 _N side, the image processing system 100
Is configured to read an application form brought by a customer and transmit the extracted information to a management center via a network. Checking whether a label or a receipt or the like is correctly affixed to the paper brought by the customer can be performed by a simple check performed by the clerk of the convenience store when receiving the paper. In this embodiment, the image processing system 100 has the same configuration as the image processing system described in the above embodiment, and converts character information input by handwriting into a text code and transmits it to a management center (in this case, , The image data of the area is transmitted only when it cannot be converted to text),
The transmission data amount is reduced and an increase in the network load is suppressed as compared with the case where the image of the entire sheet is transmitted as it is or after data compression.

It is a matter of course that the configuration in which the image processing system 100 is provided in the convenience store and the configuration in which the image processing system 100 is provided on the management center side may be mixed.

[0041]

As described above, according to the present invention,
When sending quizzes, present application forms, questionnaire forms, etc. to the product provider, the customer need only hand over to the nearest convenience store, etc., not by mail, and the mailing fee is unnecessary, and the application of paper It is expected that the number of cases will increase, thereby increasing the sales promotion effect of the product.

Further, according to the present invention, on the paper management center side, the information written on the recovered paper is automatically read through the image processing system and registered in the database, so that the operator can perform a type input operation. It is unnecessary and has the effect of saving labor and reducing costs.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2A is an application form according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG.
FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a cover of a bundle of sheets.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of an image processing system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Customer 2 Convenience store 3 Paper 10 Management center 100 Image processing system 101 Host computer 102 Database 110 Optical image reading device 120 Character recognition means 130 Mark recognition means 140 Barcode recognition means

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. A customer who has obtained an application or answer sheet prepared for sales promotion of a product and filled in necessary items on the sheet, passes the sheet to a store handling the sheet, At the store, a plurality of sheets received from the customer are collected and bundled, and a bundle obtained by adding sheets attached with information for specifying the store is delivered to a management center. A method for managing sales promotion paper, comprising reading an image with an image reading device and registering necessary information in a database. 2. The management center reads the paper as image data with an image reading device, recognizes a predetermined item in the image data or extracts an image, and registers it in the database. Item 1. A method for managing sales promotion paper according to item 1. 3. A method for managing sales promotion paper according to claim 2, wherein said character-recognized or image-extracted information is registered in said database in association with information specifying said shop. . 4. A customer who obtains an application or answer form prepared for sales promotion of a product, fills in the necessary items and sets the form, passes the form to a store handling the form,
In the store, the information on the paper received from the customer is read by an image reading device installed in the store, necessary information is extracted, and the information is transmitted to a management center that is connected to and communicated with the store. And registering the information received from the store in a database. 5. The sales promotion according to claim 1, wherein an application or answer sheet prepared for sales promotion of a product is provided at the store. Paper management method. 6. The management center identifies a merchandise provider corresponding to the paper based on information of the merchandise provider extracted from the information on the paper, and identifies the character information or image information extracted from the paper. 6. The method for managing sales promotion paper according to claim 1, wherein the method is transmitted to a corresponding product provider. 7. Acquisition of a quiz or present application or questionnaire response form provided at the store,
The customer who fills in the necessary items on the sheet sets the sheet to the store that handles the sheet, and at the store receiving the sheet from the customer, collects and bundles a plurality of sheets received from the customer, A bundle formed by adding sheets to which information specifying the store is delivered to a management center.The management center reads the sheets as image data with an image processing system, and deletes predetermined items in the image data. A method for managing sales promotion paper, wherein character recognition or image extraction is performed and the image is registered in the database. 8. Acquisition of a quiz or present application or questionnaire response form provided at the store,
The customer who fills in the required items on the form sets the form to the store that handles the form, and in the store that receives the form from the customer, sends the form information received from the customer to the store. The installed image processing system reads the image data as image data, performs character recognition or extracts an image of a predetermined item in the image data, and transmits the extracted information to a management center that is connected to and communicates with the image processing system of the store. Then, in the management center, the information received from the store,
A method for managing sales promotion paper, which is registered in a database. 9. Obtaining a quiz or present application or questionnaire response form provided at the store,
A customer who sets necessary items for the paper passes the paper to the store, where the store collects the paper received from the customer and adds a bundle of paper to which information specifying the store is added. An image reading means for reading the sheet as image data, a means for character recognition or image extraction of information of a predetermined item from the image data read by the image reading means, Or a means for registering the information extracted from the image in a database. 10. A customer who obtains a quiz or present application or questionnaire answer sheet provided in a store and sets necessary items in the sheet, hands over the sheet to a store handling the sheet. , At the store,
The received paper is read by an image processing system installed in the store, the image processing system reads the paper received from the customer as image data, and the image reading unit reads the paper as image data. Means for character recognition or image extraction of information of a predetermined item from the image data, and means for transmitting the character-recognized or image-extracted information to a management center via a network, the management center comprising: Means for registering information transmitted from the store in the database in association with the store, and a paper processing system.