Global electronic commerce system

A method for effecting global e-commerce marketing and sales of manufacturers' products, the method comprising:

• placing, on Web pages of referral Websites that use a variety of languages and serve geographic locales throughout the world, embedded HTML forms that are submitted by buyers to request information about products from at least one manufacturer;
• storing one locale identifier value at each referral Website among said referral Websites, where said locale identifier is a numerical value that is unique among many numerical locale identifiers that are assigned to the pairings of specific geographic locales and specific languages commonly used in those geographic locales, and where the geographic locale is the country served by said referral Website and where the referral Website is rendered in the language commonly used in that one geographic locale among said geographic locales;
• storing in a relational database more than one natural language, locale-specific version of marketing information about each product of said products, where each stored version of marketing information is related to a stored value that is one of said locale identifier values and where said value identifies the language of the stored version of marketing information;
• storing identifier values for each said product so that each said product in said database is identified by a product identifier value, a category identifier value, a family identifier value, a group identifier value, and a department identifier value;
• storing a set of SQL procedures in said database, where each procedure can be used to retrieve one locale-specific language version of said stored marketing information about a product;
• storing, in a server, a set of locale-specific server scripts and style sheets that are selectively used to generate locale-specific e-commerce Web pages that display said translated marketing information;
• displaying to a Buyer, who is using a Web browser and is connected by the Internet to one referral Website of said referral Websites, one HTML form of said HTML forms that is manually activated to send a request to receive marketing information about a department of products, where the request comprises, first, a department identifier value that identifies the products that are a subject of the marketing information request by said buyer, and, second, a locale identifier value for a specific locale that is served by the referral Website;
• receiving at said server, connected to said database, said request from said Buyer, where said request includes said department identifier value and said locale identifier value;
• delivering in response to the buyer's request a series of interactive menus by which the Buyer drills down through a hierarchy of department, group, family, and category to select for viewing product information about a particular product;
• processing, by said server, said request for said marketing information about said product, where a product identifier value and said locale identifier value are used to select one SQL procedure of said set of SQL procedures to retrieve said one locale-specific language version of marketing information from said database;
• generating an e-commerce Web page by using said one locale-specific language version of marketing information in conjunction with using one server script and one style sheet from said set of locale-specific server scripts and style sheets;
• transmitting from said server said e-commerce Web page for display on said Buyer's said Web browser from which said request originated, where the Web page contains marketing information that includes an offer to sell said product for a certain price as expressed in a currency that is commonly accepted in the locale identified by said locale identifier value and also contains an interactive link that is manually activated by said Buyer to order a purchase of said product;
• transmitting from said Web browser to said server said purchase order;
• collecting payment for said purchase of said product at a Website enabled for processing of e-commerce purchase transactions;
• and
• notifying said manufacturer that said purchase of said product has been made by said Buyer.