Informing customers regarding items on their shopping list
AssigneeWal-Mart Stores, Inc.
InventorsStuart Argue, Anthony Emile Marcar
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods are disclosed for alerting a customer when an item is out of stock or in stock. In embodiments, the customer may add items to a shopping list within a shopping list software application (commonly known as an “app”) installed on a mobile computing device such as a smart phone. According to embodiments of the present disclosure, if one or more items on the shopping list become out-of-stock, and/or later become in-stock, the system may transmit an alert to be displayed on the shopping list app to notify the customer. The system may notify the customer regarding relevant changes in product inventories at selected retail store branches where the customer is most likely to shop and/or has recently shopped.
Claims15
A computer-implemented method of notifying a customer comprising:
- receiving, at a notification module, a list of one or more product identification codes corresponding to a product in a shopping list of the customer;
- determining, by the notification module, an inventory status of the product that corresponds to the one or more product identification codes;
- and
- transmitting, by a shopping list application server to a mobile computing device, a signal regarding the inventory status of the product.
A shopping list item notification system, comprising:
- a product inventory database adapted to record an inventory status for at least one product listed on a customer's shopping list;
- a notification module comprising one or more notification processors and one or more notification memory devices operably coupled to the one or more notification processors and storing executable and operational notification data, the executable and operational notification data effective to cause the one or more notification processors to cause a notification to be displayed by a mobile computing software application in response to a change in the inventory status for at least one product.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.