Information obtaining method, information obtaining system, and information appliance

An information obtaining system comprising:

• a server device;
• and
• a household electric appliance communicatively connected to the server device, wherein the server device includes:
• a first receiving section for receiving information regarding a consumer good which has been determined as a consumer good actually used by a user;
• a first memory section for storing a remaining amount of a consumer good;
• a memory control section for storing, in the first memory section, a remaining amount of the consumer good which has been determined as a consumer good actually used by the user, based on the received information regarding the consumer good;
• a second receiving section for receiving, from the household electric appliance, an appliance identifier for identifying the household electric appliance and an operation status of the household electric appliance;
• an estimating section for estimating the remaining amount of the consumer good using the received operation status;
• an updating section for updating the remaining amount of the consumer good stored in the first memory section based on the estimated remaining amount of the consumer good;
• a decision section for deciding whether or not the updated remaining amount of the consumer good is less than or equal to a predetermined amount;
• a creating section for creating a confirmation message for accepting, from the user, an input indicating whether or not the consumer good being actually used with the household electric appliance coincides with the consumer good stored in the first memory section, when the decision section decides that the updated remaining amount of the consumer good is less than the predetermined amount;
• and
• a first transmitting section for transmitting, to the household electric appliance, the created confirmation message;
• a second memory section for storing the information regarding a consumer good in a second memory section while the information is associated with a type of household electric appliance;
• a third receiving section for receiving sales information in which information for identifying a consumer good which has been purchased by the user is associated with a type of the household electric appliance with which the consumer good is used;
• a third memory section for storing the received sales information;
• a fourth receiving section for receiving, from the household electric appliance, a request for the information regarding the consumer good and the appliance identifier for identifying the household electric appliance;
• a fourth memory section for storing user information in which stored a user identifier identifying the user is associated with the appliance identifier identifying the household electric appliance;
• a selecting section for (i) identifying the user who uses the household electric appliance associated with the received appliance identifier, the user being identified using the user information stored in the fourth memory section, and (ii) selecting a consumer good related to the household electric appliance associated with the received appliance identifier from among consumer goods which have been purchased by the identified user in the sales information stored in the third memory;
• an extracting section for extracting, from the second memory section, information regarding the selected consumer good from among consumer goods which can be used with the household electric appliance associated with the received appliance identifier;
• and
• a second transmitting section for transmitting, to the household electric appliance, the extracted information regarding the selected consumer good, and
• wherein the household electric appliance includes:
• a first transmitting section for transmitting, to the server device, a request for the information regarding a consumer good and an identifier for identifying the household electric appliance;
• a first receiving section for receiving the information regarding a consumer good transmitted by the server device;
• a second transmitting section for transmitting, to the server device, the information regarding a consumer good which has been determined as a consumer good actually used by the user;
• a third transmitting section for transmitting, to the server device, the identifier for identifying the household electric appliance and the operation status of the household electric appliance,
• a second receiving section for receiving the confirmation message transmitted by the server device;
• and
• a display for displaying the received confirmation message.