Shopping pattern recognition

A method, comprising:

• obtaining, by executable instructions executing on a hardware processor from a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of a cloud processing environment as a shopping recommendation manager, a shopping pattern for a customer produced by:
• receiving a randomized identity associated with the customer from a retailer, wherein the retailer maintains a mapping between the randomized identity and an actual identity for the customer ensuring privacy of the customer is maintained with respect to the shopping recommendation manager;
• receiving a transaction history associated with the randomized identity from the retailer;
• mining the transaction history of the customer based, at least in part, on per-product purchase patterns and days-of-week patterns associated with each purchase of the customer on an individual product basis and frequencies of those purchases and based on a specific communication channel identified for the shopping pattern that is selected from a plurality of communication channels by identifying the per-product purchase patterns and the days-of-week patterns from the transaction history;
• wherein the plurality of communication channels include:
• a mobile channel, an interactive television channel, a web channel, an email channel, a Point-Of-Sale Channel, and a call center channel;
• deriving, by the shopping recommendation manager, a recommendation for the retailer based on the shopping pattern, wherein deriving further includes deriving the recommendation as a specific product offering for the customer that is to be made to the customer at a specific time over the specific communication channel;
• and
• communicating, by the shopping recommendation manager, the recommendation over the specific communication channel at the specific time to:
• a retail system of the retailer or the customer by using information provided by the retailer for the customer.

A system, comprising:

• a server including:
• a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that includes executable instructions representing a shopping pattern manager and a shopping recommendation service;
• a hardware processor;
• and
• the shopping pattern manager when executed on the hardware processor, cause the hardware processor to:
• mine a transaction history of a customer based at least in part on per-product purchase patterns and days-of-week patterns associated with each purchase of the customer on an individual product basis by identifying the per-product purchase patterns and the days-of-week patterns from the transaction history and frequencies of those purchases to generate a shopping pattern for the customer;
• associate a specific communication channel that is identified with the shopping pattern;
• wherein the specific communication channel is selected from a plurality of communication channels that at least includes:
• a mobile channel, an interactive television channel, a web channel, an email channel, a Point-Of-Sale Channel, and a call center channel;
• wherein the shopping manager receives the transaction history from a retailer with a randomized identity for the customer and the retailer maintains a mapping between the randomized identity and an actual identity for the customer to ensure that the actual identity of the customer remains anonymous to the shopping pattern manager and a shopping recommendation service and to ensure privacy is maintained for the customer with respect to the shopping pattern manager and the shopping recommendation service;
• make a recommendation based on the shopping pattern and the specific communication channel for a specific product during a specific time for delivery to the customer;
• directly deliver the recommendation, through information provided by the retailer, to the customer or indirectly deliver the recommendation to the customer through the retailer with the retailer directly delivering the recommendation to the customer;
• and
• process the server as part of a cloud processing environment.