Computer program product for prioritizing order fulfillment at a retail sales facility based on anticipated customer arrival times

A computer program product for prioritizing order fulfillment at a retail sales facility, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying computer-executable program instructions thereon that, when executed, causes a computer system that includes one or more computer devices to:

• receive purchase request information at a retail sales facility computing device for a first customer, the purchase information providing identifying information of the first customer and order information for enabling order fulfillment;
• receive location information for the first customer at the retail sales facility computing device, the received location information including the identifying information of the first customer, wherein the location information for the first customer comprises GPS-based location information of the first customer that is captured by a GPS device associated with a mobile computing device of the first customer;
• process the received location information for the first customer together with location information of the retail sales facility by the retail sales facility computing device to predict an estimated time of arrival (ETA) for the first customer at the retail sales facility, wherein the location information for the retail sales facility comprises GPS-based location information of the retail sales facility, and wherein the ETA prediction is performed using the GPS-based location information of the first customer and the GPS-based location information of the retail sales facility;
• schedule a time interval by the retail sales facility computing device within which to acquire updated location information for the first customer,
• wherein the scheduled time interval is set as a function of a distance between the first customer and retail sales facility calculated as a function of the location information for the first customer together with the location information of the retail sales facility, and
• wherein the scheduled time interval decreases from an initial non-zero value to one or more shorter non-zero values as the distance between the first customer and the retail sales facility decreases;
• and
• place the identifying information, order information and ETA for the first customer in an order fulfillment queue for the retail sales facility including the identifying information, order information and ETA for at least one additional customer, wherein entries in the order fulfillment queue are ordered in increasing ETA order.