US 7,302,429 B1Granted

Customizable electronic commerce comparison system and method

OwnerWilliam Paul Wankerinventor

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Abstract

In a consumer information system, a method of comparing products and services including providing product specific information, providing merchant specific information on the specified product, providing merchant specific business information, providing product specific information collected by third parties, providing merchant specific information collected by third parties, applying weighting factors to the information provided, producing an aggregate value for each merchant based on the weighting factors as applied to the information provided, and producing a ranking of the merchants offering the specified product based on the aggregate value for each merchant. The system provides for consumers to select a set of standardized weighting factors or to modify the standardized weighting factors or to create their own weighting factors. The system provides detailed information to consumers on the breakdown of factors influencing the rating.

Claims25

Dependent claims

In an online comparison system, a method of ranking merchants, comprising:

entering by a consumer a set of weighting factors prior to receiving query information related to a potential consumer purchase, the weighting factors corresponding to categories of merchant comparison information data;
receiving the query information related to the potential consumer purchase;
receiving a plurality of merchant comparison information data for a plurality of merchants related to completing the potential consumer purchase, the merchant comparison information data for a merchant organized into a plurality of categories, wherein the merchant comparison information data includes non-opinion data from at least two categories from price category, product availability category, product inventory category, time to deliver product category, payment terms category, payment method category, merchant creditworthiness category, and inventory category information;
calculating a plurality of respective merchant data weight resultant values for each merchant of the plurality of merchants by multiplying each weighting factor from the entered set of weighting factors by a data value of the merchant comparison information data from a corresponding merchant data category;
calculating an aggregate score for each merchant by summing the plurality of calculated merchant data weight resultant values;
ranking the merchants based on the aggregate scores to produce a ranking result;
and
returning the ranking result to the consumer, the ranking result corresponding to the received query information.

5 more elements

A method of ranking merchants in an online comparison system, comprising the steps of:

entering by a consumer a set of weighting factors prior to receiving query information related to a potential consumer purchase of a user specified product;
receiving the query information relating to said user specified product from the consumer;
retrieving a list of merchants from a database, wherein the list of merchants includes merchants offering said user specified product;
retrieving merchant specific information about the merchants in said list of merchants, said merchant specific information including a plurality of merchant data entry values, the merchant data entry values representing non-opinion data;
for each merchant in the list of merchants, applying the weighting factors to a corresponding subset of the merchant specific information including multiplying each of said merchant data entry values by a corresponding weighting factor from the set of weighting factors to calculate a merchant data weight resultant value, to produce a plurality of merchant data weight resultant values;
for each merchant in the list of merchants, summing the corresponding plurality of merchant data weight resultant values to calculate a merchant aggregate score for said each merchant;
ranking said list of merchants based on the calculated merchant aggregate scores to produce a ranking result;
and
returning the ranking result to the consumer, the ranking result corresponding to said user specified product, wherein any merchant for which the calculated aggregate score does not satisfy a specified criterion is excluded from the result.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.