Patent Application
20090070207
In recent years, cellular telephones have evolved from simple, dedicated devices for making voice telephone calls to sophisticated, multifunction devices for communicating voice and data. As part of this evolution, the computing power of such devices has increased dramatically, allowing complex application programs to be written for these devices. Additionally, the input capabilities of these multifunction devices have become far more flexible, often allowing users to interact with multifunction devices by way of keys, touchscreens and/or small keyboards. These concurrent improvements in communications capabilities, computing power, and user input flexibility have allowed a new generation of rich, interactive applications to develop for mobile communication devices.
A primary example of such rich, interactive applications is one which downloads electronic coupons from a coupon server to a multifunction device, for possible redemption at a retail store. For example, such applications are disclosed in United States Published Patent Application 20060190331 entitled Delivering targeted advertising to mobile devices and United States Published Patent Application 20060190330 entitled Delivering targeted advertising to mobile devices. The disclosures of both of these applications are incorporated herein by reference.
Prior to redemption of a coupon, the multifunction device may have a series of coupons stored in memory, available for selection by a consumer. When the consumer selects a coupon stored in memory, an interactive coupon application executing on the multifunction device communicates the selection to a server. Upon receiving the selection, the server validates the selected coupon and responds to the coupon application with a message that enables redemption of the selected coupon.
The rich nature of this coupon application is further supported by an ability to tailor coupon marketing and validation to individual consumers on several levels. Initially, targeted coupons may be sent to individual consumers based on their past purchase history or known brand preferences. Once a stored coupon is selected by a consumer for redemption, the coupon server may validate that the attempted coupon redemption meets certain characteristics before enabling redemption of the coupon. For example, the coupon server may verify that the date of attempted coupon redemption is within the date range of the corresponding promotion or that this consumer has not previously redeemed a similar coupon. Additionally, coupon redemption data may be collected and analyzed on a per-consumer and per-transaction basis. This analysis may highlight important purchasing trends among consumers (e.g., how many consumers that dine at a particular restaurant also shop at a nearby department store as part of the same trip). From these trends, coupons for related products may be sent to consumers, further enhancing the marketing value of the coupon application. Collecting and analyzing the sophisticated purchasing information that results from this interaction with consumers has tremendous value to retailers.
Despite the value such rich applications offer to retailers and to consumers, limitations in the multifunction devices have prevented these applications from reaching their full potential. Specifically, increases in the form factor of multifunction devices have not kept pace with the aforementioned improvements in these devices. Although the market has experimented with larger multifunction devices, consumers prefer devices that easily fit in the human hand. This consumer preference places an upper limit on the screen size in such devices, which limits the number of electronic coupons and the type of coupon information that may be displayed on such screens.
Limiting the number of electronic coupons that may be displayed on multifunction devices has negative consequences for the effective marketing of products related to such coupons. For example, if a coupon server sends a certain number of electronic coupons to a multifunction device, but less than that number of electronic coupons may be concurrently displayed on the multifunction device, the consumer may be required to interact with the device (e.g., pressing a scroll button) to see the additional electronic coupons. Unfortunately for the consumer and for the retailer, electronic coupons that require consumer interaction to display are often overlooked by consumers, substantially limiting the value of delivering such additional electronic coupons.
Limiting the type of coupon information that may be displayed on multifunction devices also has negative consequences for the effective marketing of products. Retailers invest heavily in brand identification, often through brand indicia, and they prefer to leverage this investment at every marketing opportunity. Additionally, consumers are often influenced by the presence of such brand indicia, as a means for quickly finding what they desire. Therefore, relying on a text-based electronic coupon rather than an image-based coupon with brand indicia may substantially reduce the marketing value of the electronic coupon to the retailer and to the consumer. However, images with brand indicia typically require more screen area than displaying textual representations of brand names. Thus, distributors of electronic coupons are faced with the difficult prospect of either limiting the number of coupons displayed or limiting the effectiveness of such coupons, or both, based on the limited screen size of the multifunction device.
What is needed in the art is a means for mitigating the aforementioned disadvantages.
In accordance with the present invention, embodiments of a communication application are presented. The communication application according to embodiments of the present invention can include a server module executable on a server computing device and a communication module executable on a communication device. The communication device may be a mobile telephone, a pager or a handheld computer and may include a display. The server module may be communicatively coupled over a network to the communication module.
In some embodiments of the invention, the communication module may include a coupon display module for storing a plurality of sets of coupon text data and respective brand indicia images corresponding to the sets of coupon text data. The coupon display module also sends plural sets of coupon text data to a client module. Each set of coupon text data corresponds to a coupon. The client module may display coupon text data on the communication device display without displaying brand indicia images. Additionally, the client module may replace a selected set of the coupon text data display with the respective brand indicia image corresponding to the selected set of coupon text data.
In some embodiments of the invention, the replacement operation may be performed when a cursor hovers over the coupon text data via a user interface, as a means for selecting one set of coupon text data corresponding to a desired coupon.
In some embodiments of the invention, the server module is coupled to a coupon repository that is capable of storing a plurality of sets of coupon text data and corresponding brand indicia images. Additionally, the server module may include an operation of sending plural sets of coupon text data to the client module.
Within the base station 102, the transmitter/receiver 110 translates voice and digital data, including electronic coupons, between a digital form that the server computing device 108 may utilize and a form that may be transmitted or received by the antenna 106. The transmitter/receiver 110 is coupled to the server computing device 108 and to the server antenna 106 through couplings 112 and 114, respectively. The cellular base station 102 may also be coupled to a conventional telephone network (not shown) and/or to other computer networks, including the Internet (not shown).
The multifunction device 104 includes an antenna 116, a central processing unit (“CPU”) 120, a memory 132, an input/output (“I/O”) controller 118, a transmitter/receiver 126, a keyboard/touchscreen controller 122, a display adapter 124, a display 130 and a keyboard/touchscreen 128. The CPU 120 executes machine instructions stored in the memory 132, including a communication module, that enable the multifunction device 104 to transmit and receive voice and data communications between the cellular base station 102 and the multifunction device 104. The CPU 120 also executes machine instructions which allow the multifunction device 104 to respond to user input, such as moving a selection cursor in response to user input received through the keyboard/touchscreen 128. The CPU 120 may update the display 130 in response to such user input. Display updates may include hovering the selection cursor over an electronic coupon shown on the display 130 or expanding a coupon from a text-based coupon to an image-based coupon.
The CPU 120 may also transmit or receive data from the cellular base station 102 by communicating with the I/O controller 118, which communicates with the transmitter/receiver 126. The transmitter/receiver 126 translates voice and digital data, including electronic coupons and the communication module, between a digital form that the I/O controller 118 may utilize and a form that may be transmitted or received by the antenna 116.
The I/O controller 118 is coupled to the transmitter/receiver 126, the keyboard/touchscreen controller 122 and the CPU 120 through couplings 144, 134 and 136, respectively. The CPU 120 is coupled to the memory 132 and the display adapter 124 through couplings 138 and 140, respectively. The display 130 is coupled to the display adapter 124 through a coupling 142. The keyboard/touchscreen controller 122 is coupled to the keyboard/touchscreen 128 through a coupling 146. The cellular base station 102 may communicate with the multifunction device 104 through antennas 106 and 116 as shown.
As shown in
In one embodiment of the invention, the server computing device 108 acts as a communication application server by executing the server module 160. One function of the server module 160 is to transmit a copy of the communication module 164 to the multifunction device 104. Once the copy of the communication module 164 is received by the multifunction device 104, the CPU 120 stores the copy of the communication module 164 in memory 132 as communication module 166 and configures the communication module 166 for execution on the multifunction device 104.
Another function of the server module 160 is to respond to coupon requests from the multifunction device 104. When the CPU 120 executes the communication module 166, the client module 168, as a communication application client, requests electronic coupons from the server module 160. In response, the server module 160 transmits a plurality of text-based electronic coupons with respective promotional offers and/or brand indicia images from the coupon repository 162 to the client module 168. The client module 168 stores the coupons received in coupon data 172 and also communicates the stored coupons to the coupon display module 170. Upon receiving the coupons, the coupon display module 170 displays the electronic coupons on the display 130, as described in conjunction with
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In the present invention, the disadvantages related to displaying image-based coupons in prior art systems are substantially reduced by replacing a single text-based electronic coupon with a single image-based electronic coupon including brand indicia when a consumer causes the selection cursor to hover over the text-based electronic coupon. Upon recognizing such a hover condition, the CPU 120, in conjunction with the client coupons 168 and with the display adapter 124, replaces the text-based coupon (e.g., coupon 204) with the corresponding image-based coupon containing brand indicia (e.g., coupon 222) for the duration of the hover condition. In light of the limited display space available on the display 130, the CPU 120 may also intelligently shift the remaining text-based coupons down or up, including shifting one or more electronic coupons off the display 130, for the duration of the hover condition. Once an image-based coupon has been displayed, due to a hover condition, the user may select that coupon for redemption through interaction with the keyboard/touchscreen 128.
Additionally, if a consumer hovers over a sequence of text-based coupons, each text-based coupon is replaced with a corresponding image-based coupon including brand indicia for the duration of time that the selection cursor hovers over a corresponding coupon. Thus, the replacement operation allows image-based electronic coupons that include brand indicia to be displayed for each electronic coupon, while limiting the display area penalty for display of such coupons to the area penalty corresponding to a single image-based coupon. Limiting the area penalty for displaying a series of image-based coupons to the area penalty corresponding to a single image-based coupon represents a substantial improvement over prior art electronic coupon systems that incurred the area penalty for display of each image-based coupon.
As shown in
As described in conjunction with
One advantage of the disclosed system is that downloading electronic coupons with promotional offers and/or with brand indicia that are displayed during a hover condition offers substantial marketing value to retailers and consumers over prior art systems that employ purely text-based electronic coupons and over those prior art systems employing a plurality of image-based electronic coupons.
The various elements of the preferred embodiment can be implemented as hardware and/or software in various ways. For example, each module can be accomplished by a microprocessor programmed in a known manner. The server and multifunction device can be implemented as one or more devices communicating over a network or through local communications. For example, the “server can be one or more computing devices such as personal computers or servers. The various memories can be implemented as a single memory or plural memories as needed. Any type of operation systems and interfaces can be used to implement the invention.
