A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office, patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The present invention relates to a method and system for providing integrated auction services through a seller's e-commerce site. In particular, the present invention relates to restricting access to integrated auction services through target groups in an internal auction system.
Businesses traditionally look for effective ways in which to make their products available to potential buyers. In addition to sales through physical “brick and mortar” stores, innovative ways to sell products are often used especially to dispose of old or excess inventory. The advent of the Internet along with the accompanying revolution in computer and network technology has created new sales paradigms and allowed businesses to establish their own electronic commerce (“e-commerce”) presence through the use of, for example, Internet Web sites. E-commerce sales have steadily grown and now account for a significant portion of business-to-consumer as well as business-to-business sales. Auctions make up a significant portion of e-commerce sales and have grown into an increasingly more important sales paradigm.
The revolution in network and computer capability along with the mass availability and development of the Internet facilitates alternative methods of sales such as auctions. Network-based electronic auctions, such as for example those conducted over the Internet, may allow a seller considerable control over an auction and may increase auction participation. For example, a seller may want to limit participation in the auction where the potential pool of potential customers is limited or where allowing an open auction may, in some manner, hinder the auction process. In another example where an auction may be open to all potential bidders it is often beneficial to maximize the number of people participating in the auction in order to extract the greatest price for the product or lot being auctioned. The Internet and network-based computing provide the ability to aggregate large numbers of bidders for an auction in an easier and generally less costly manner than through traditional auctions. Though network-based auctions (e.g., Internet based auctions) provide significant advantages, the reliance on third party auction providers has limited a seller's control in a number of ways including through rules on the conformance of auction procedures and the loss of control over restricting auction participation and bidding.
Third party auction providers provide a large scale e-commerce community portal that brings together large numbers of buyers and sellers who gather to trade in goods and services. Everyday, millions of items across thousands of categories are available on third party auction providers for sale by auction and for a fixed price, enabling trade on a local, national, and international basis with customized Internet Web sites in markets around the world. These third party auction providers may provide auction services for the seller as well as access to a ready pool of potential buyers but in exchange they may require a seller to conform their auctioning processes and procedures. In addition, a third party auction provider typically takes a fee that may be fixed or proportional to the value of the auctioned goods and/or services. In both cases, the seller loses some degree of control over the auction process in exchange for using the third party auction service.
In addition to the limitations on auction procedures and processes imposed by a third party auction provider, a business may not be able to make maximum use of its business information in providing and generating auctions through a third party auction service. Businesses have typically kept their information, including information regarding their assets and inventory they wish to sell or auction off, in database systems that are part of their corporate information systems. Conventional systems provide limited linking between these business information management systems and online Web auction services, and, therefore, manual involvement with the Web auction service is required for each auction or sales posting conducted. These problems may be overcome and the limitations of third party auction services avoided by providing auction services through a seller's own e-commerce site. In this manner, full advantage may be taken by linking a seller's business information management systems with its e-commerce site allowing greater automation of the auction submission, tracking, and post-auction processing. An integrated internal auction system solves these problems in a novel manner providing considerable advantages to a seller. In this manner, a seller may be able to control customer access to an auction on a seller's internal auction system.
a is a diagram illustrating the integrated internal auction system according to one embodiment of the present invention.
b is a diagram illustrating a general integrated auction process according to one embodiment of the present invention.
a is an example data architecture for implementing a bidder restriction for an auction using a target group according to one embodiment of the present invention.
b is an example data architecture for implementing a bidder restriction for an auction using a customer identifier instead of a target group according to one embodiment of the present invention.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a method and system for providing an integrated auction capability through a seller's e-commerce site is provided through an internal auction system. The internal auction system may include a seller-side application to allow a seller to generate an auction using an available seller business information management system, publish the auction on a seller's e-commerce site, process an auction winner, and monitor ongoing auctions in a manner leveraging a seller's existing business information management systems and e-commerce sites. The internal auction system may also include a buyer-side application to provide a buyer functionality on a seller's e-commerce site to view and participate in published auctions, to monitor auctions and bidding, and to perform any necessary checkout procedures on winning an auction. The internal auction system serves as the conduit between seller's business information management system(s) and e-commerce site(s) while providing seller and/or buyer functionality to implement an integrated auction capability under the seller's internal control (i.e., without using an external third party auction provider or facilitator).
In one embodiment of the present invention, the seller may designate a target group of customers allowed to access the auction thereby creating a bidder restriction on the auction where customers not in this target group are not allowed to see the auction and its details as well as not being allowed to participate in the auction. The target group may be designated by the seller when the auction is first created or it may be specified during the modification of the auction. The example embodiments described below relate to the auction creation process but they may equally apply with appropriate modification to the editing and updating of a saved auction in the internal auction system according to one embodiment of the present invention. In addition the term “target group” is used herein to refer to a designated target group containing already specified customers as well as to individually identified customers or business partners that may be selected by the seller. A target group may be defined by using business partner (i.e., customer) selection options provided by or through an internal auction application. In addition, a target group may be defined and/or edited using customer relationship management (CRM) components and/or a CRM-based system that is part of the seller's business information management system(s). Selecting a target group for the auction creates a bidder restriction preventing other potential bidders from viewing any auction information and/or participating in the auction. In an alternative embodiment of the present invention, a separate first bidder restriction may exist to control which customers may view the auction information and a second bidder restriction containing a subset of the first bidder restriction set of customers may be used to limit which of the customers who are allowed to view the auction may participate in the auction.
The example embodiment discussed herein is for a private auction where access is limited to customers defined in the target group. In an alternative embodiment of the present invention for a public auction, the target group may be used to identify which customers are notified about the auction but the target group is not used to restrict participation in the auction. The changes necessary to implement this embodiment over the example embodiment discussed herein should be evident to those skilled in the art.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, the internal auction application links a seller's e-commerce site with a seller's existing business information management system(s) in order to provide auction services to buyers through the seller's e-commerce site. A seller's e-commerce site according to this embodiment may be any electronic business presence that a seller provides to potential buyers. For example, a seller's Web site on the Internet that offers information on or purchase of seller's products can be considered a seller's e-commerce site. A seller's business information management system according to this embodiment may be any seller information system containing product and/or sales and marketing information that may be used in the provision of products to a buyer. For example, a seller's inventory system that tracks the availability of seller's products may be considered one form of many potential seller's business information management systems. A seller's business information management system implies business applications using a programming and/or program interface working with a database to accomplish one or more tasks. However, according to this embodiment a seller's business information management system may be considered either the database and the interface to access the database by itself as well as this database and associated interface in conjunction with associated applications. The internal auction application according to this embodiment provides the functionality to implement the auctioning of seller products (i.e., products sold by the seller) on the seller's e-commerce site in conjunction with using at least one of the seller's business information management systems.
a is a diagram illustrating the integrated internal auction system according to one embodiment of the present invention. A seller 110 may create an auction using an internal auction application 120 residing on the seller's information technology hardware environment 135. For example, the internal auction application 120 may consist of one or more software applications, programs, modules, procedures, or other computer code to include firmware and may additionally include data that resides on one or more servers, computers, or other hardware platforms that make up the seller's information technology hardware environment 135. The internal auction application 120 may be conceptualized as containing a seller-side application 121 handling the seller interaction 154 with the integrated internal auction system 100 through the internal auction application 120. The seller-side application 121 may provide the functionality allowing the seller 110 to create, monitor, and manage one or more auctions. The internal auction application 120 may also be conceptualized as containing a buyer-side application 122 handling the buyer interaction 155 with the integrated internal auction system 100 allowing buyer interaction 155 with the internal auction application 120 and the seller's business information management system(s) 140 through a seller's e-commerce site 115. The buyer-side application 122 may provide the functionality allowing the buyer 105 to view auctions, participate in active auctions, monitor auctions, and perform the checkout process on won auctions. Though conceptually the functionality provided by the seller-side application 121 and the buyer-side application 122 of the internal auction application 120 are different, both may share data sets, procedures, libraries, and other elements of software code or data. In one embodiment of the present invention, all the elements of the internal auction application 120 may either be contained in both the conceptual subsets-seller-side application 121 and buyer-side application 122-or in an alternative embodiment the internal auction application 120 may contain additional elements of software code and/or data in addition to these conceptual subsets 121, 122. The internal auction application 120 uses data that may be contained in a seller's business information management system(s) 140 and/or may be stored in a local database 130 for the internal auction application 120. This local database 130 may be considered part of the internal auction application 120 in this embodiment of the present invention even if the database is stored separately in a memory or storage system.
An internal auction application 120 may communicate 152 with the local database 130; communicate 153 with the seller's business information management system(s) 140; and communicate 151 with the seller's e-commerce site 115 using a communication network that is part of the seller's information technology hardware environment 135. For example, the seller's e-commerce site 115, internal auction application 120, local database 130, and business information management system(s) 140 may be located on servers or other computers that are part of a communication network-such as a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN)-controlled by the seller. In an alternative embodiment, the seller's information technology hardware environment 135 may include a communication network that is shared by the seller with other network users. For example, the seller's e-commerce site 115, internal auction application 120, local database 130, and business information management system(s) 140 may be located on servers or other computers that are part of at least one internal seller communication network (e.g., a LAN and/or WAN) as well as a shared (i.e., shared by seller with other non-seller related entities) communication network such as the Internet. In either embodiment regardless of the network used for communication between the elements of the integrated auction system 100, seller communication 154 and buyer communication 155 with the integrated auction system 100 may occur over an external network (i.e., a network external to the seller and not under the seller's direct control), such as for example, the Internet. In an alternative embodiment, seller and buyer communication 154, 155 with the integrated auction application 100 may occur over a seller-controlled network (such as a seller-controlled wide area sales network) and/or may involve a combination of at least one seller-controlled network and at least one external network.
The integrated auction system 100 integrates a seller's business information management systems(s) 140, which serves as a backend system(s), with a seller's e-commerce site 115, serving as a front-end system, using an internal auction application 120 in order to provide auction services to the seller 110 and the buyer 105 according to one embodiment of the present invention. A seller business information management system 140 is a an application with at least one associated database 141 typically using a database management system (DBMS) that provides data storage and associated programming support for that data (e.g., a query system such as an SQL editor, optimization routines, program interfaces). For example, a seller may have an inventory control system 140 with its own inventory database. The business information management system(s) 140 may contain product information and availability information used in generating an auction and performing order generation to fulfill a winning bidder's order according to one embodiment of the present invention. The seller's e-commerce site 110 allows a buyer 105 to participate in an auction over a communication network. For example, a seller Web site on the Internet offering goods and/or services (electronic commerce) is one example of a seller e-commerce site 115. An auction in the integrated auction system 100 is made available to the buyer 105 through the seller e-commerce site 115 which may serve as the buyer portal to the integrated auction system 100 according to one embodiment of the present invention. The seller 110 creates and manages auctions through the internal auction application 120 which integrates 153 information from the business information management system(s) 140 and provides the interaction processing 151 with the buyer 105 through the seller e-commerce site 115.
b is a diagram illustrating a general integrated auction process according to one embodiment of the present invention.
The second step may have three distinct components 166-168 according to this embodiment of the present invention. The first part 166 of the second step is to save the created auction in the local database 130 of the internal auction application 120. The auction may be saved for later editing by the seller 110 if the auction is not published or activated (i.e., made available to the buyers). The publication and/or activation of the auction is the second part 167 of the second step according to this embodiment. Publication may be considered making the auction available to a customer 105 at a particular start time specified during the auction creation process. Activation may be considered immediately making the auction available to a buyer 105 regardless of a specified start time-the immediate publication of the auction. Both terms are used interchangeably throughout this document and should not be considered a particular distinction unless specifically noted. The publication and/or activation 167 of the auction makes the auction available to the buyer 105 through the seller's e-commerce site 115 if the customer 105 is authorized access to the auction by being included in the target group (i.e., bidder restriction) for the auction.
The third step may be viewed as having two components 171-172 according to this embodiment. The customer 105, if allowed in the bidder restriction, bids 171 on the available auctions through the seller e-commerce site 115 in the first component 171 of the third step. The bids and bidding information are sent 172 from the seller e-commerce site 115 to the internal auction application 120 in the second component 172 of the third step. At the conclusion of the bidding for the auction which may be manually concluded by the seller or automatically concluded according to a guideline such as for example a specified end date and time or upon reaching a price threshold, the internal auction application 120 in a fourth step 176 may determine the winner automatically or through seller 110 intervention and sends notification 176 to the winning bidder 105 while updating the auction information in database 130 and on the seller e-commerce site 115. The winning buyer 105 may then perform any necessary checkout procedures 181 in the first part of the fifth step 181 in this embodiment. The checkout may be performed through the seller e-commerce site 115 and provides the internal auction application 120 any necessary information for completing the order for the goods and/or services. The second part 182 of the fifth step is the internal auction application 120 sending the necessary information for the generation or completion of the order to the appropriate seller business information management system(s) 140 so that the order for the auction winner 105 may be completed and processed by the seller.
In addition to modifying auction parameters 210, a seller 110 may also choose to modify any bidder restrictions 220 the seller has placed on the auction. If the seller chooses to modify a bidder restriction on an auction 220, a determination may be made whether a bidder restriction on the auction already exists 225. If a bidder restriction doe not already exist on the auction 225, a seller 110 may define a target group for the auction 245. A target group may consist of one or more customers 105 that the seller wants to provide access to the auction according to this embodiment of the present invention. A target group may be defined by linking a customer relationship management (CRM) system as one of or part of a seller's business information management system 140 with the internal auction application 120 seller-side application 121 in order to allow the seller 110 to define customer parameters to search for and/or select the one or more customers to include into the target group. In this manner the target group may be chosen using a combination of either one or more searches in a seller's CRM business information management system in a CRM component of a seller's business information management system, and/or with the manual selection of customers according to this embodiment.
Once a target group is defined 245, the target needs to be associated with the auction 250 according to this embodiment of the present invention. In an example embodiment, the target group is defined 245 using the seller-side application 121 of the internal auction application 120 to access a CRM component in a seller's business information management system 140 or a CRM-based seller's business information management system 140 and, as a result, when the seller 110 saves the target group in the seller-side application 121 the association of the target group with the auction 250 is automatically made. In other words according to this embodiment, the target group is saved in a database 130, 141 in a manner where it is associated with the auction shown, for example, in
If a seller 110 decides to modify a bidder restriction 220 and a bidder restriction already exists for the auction 225, the type of modification 230 the seller 110 is attempting to make determines the resulting action according to this embodiment. If the seller 110 is not attempting to eliminate the bidder restriction 230, the seller 110 may modify the bidder restriction 240 by adding and/or removing customers 105 from the target group. If the seller 110 is attempting to remove the existing bidder restriction 230, the bidder restriction may be eliminated 235 by the appropriate means. For example in an embodiment where the data for the auction includes a target group identifier (discussed later in association with
A seller 110 may decide to exit from the auction creation process 255 at any point by making the appropriate selection from the seller-side application 121 of the internal auction application 120 according to one embodiment of the present invention. As long as the seller 110 does not exit from the auction creation process, he/she may be able to make additional modifications to the auction parameters 215, define a target group 245 and associate it with the auction 250, eliminate a bidder restriction on the auction 235, and modify an existing bidder restriction 240 according to this embodiment. If the seller 110 exits from the auction creation process 255, he/she may save the defined auction information 260 as part of exiting 255 or he/she may abandon the created auction information. If the seller 110 decides to save the created auction information 260, the auction information may be saved 265 in the internal auction application database 130 and/or in a seller's business information management system(s) 140 database 141 before the auction creation process concludes 270 according to this embodiment. If the seller 110 abandons the created auction information 260, the auction information and the auction creation process according to this embodiment concludes 270 without the auction information being saved.
Once an auction is received 305 (i.e., available), the auction may be integrated 310 into the seller e-commerce site 115 by including the auction in the display of data on the site 115. Unlike the receiving step 305 where an auction becomes available to the seller e-commerce site 115 so that it may be displayed, the integration step 310 actually includes adding the now available auction into the data displayed in the seller e-commerce site 115 according to this embodiment. This integration 310 may occur, in one embodiment, by including the auction in a listing of auctions available for display to customers 105 on the seller e-commerce site 115. In another embodiment, the integration step 310 may occur by storing the auction information in a database local to or otherwise linked and/or accessed by the seller e-commerce site 115.
A customer 105 may be allowed to access the seller e-commerce site 315 by some means of customer identification according to this embodiment. For example, a customer 105 may have a username and password they enter to access the seller e-commerce site 115. Entering the username and password may associate the customer 105 with a customer identifier similar to the customer identifier used in designating the target group for an auction having a bidder restriction. A determination 320 may be made when a customer 105 accesses the seller e-commerce site 115 or when the customer 105 attempts to view or participate in auctions whether or not the customer 105 is allowed access 320 to a particular auction. If the customer 105 is not allowed access to an auction 320, the auction information is not displayed 325 to the customer on the seller e-commerce site 115. The customer 105 will not be allowed to view information 325 regarding auctions with a bidder restriction where the customer 105 is not included in the target group (i.e., within the bidder restriction) for the auction. The customer 105 may not even know the auction exists. If the customer 105 is included in the target group for an auction 320 and is therefore allowed accessed to the auction, the auction information may be displayed 330 to the customer 105 on the seller e-commerce site 115.
A customer 105 viewing an auction 330 may decide to participate in the auction 335. If the customer 105 is allowed to view an auction 330 and attempts to participate in the auction 335, a determination may be made 340 regarding whether the customer 105 is allowed to participate in the auction 340 in addition to viewing the auction 330. If the customer 105 is allowed to participate in the auction 340, the customer 105 may participate in the auction 355 and this process is concluded for that customer 105. For example, the customer 105 may enter a bid for the auction 355. If the customer 105 is not allowed to participate in the auction 340, the customer 105 may be prohibited from participating in the auction 345. For example if the customer 105 tries to click on an auction link in one of the seller e-commerce site 115 screens, the link may be inactive with no resulting access to the auction details. In another example if the customer 105 tries to enter a bid for the auction, there may be no active “enter bid” button and/or other implementation means (e.g., pull-down menu option, etc.) or the bid may not be registered for the auction. In addition, a warning message may be provided 350 to the customer 105 informing the customer 105 that they are not permitted to participate in the auction but are allowed only to view the auction. After this warning 350 and any prevented participation 345 by the customer 105, this process may conclude 360 for this customer 105. If a customer 105 viewing an auction 330 decides not to participate in the auction 335, this process may also conclude 360 for this customer 105.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a customer 105 that is allowed access to an auction may both view and participate in the auction. Therefore, the determination first made regarding whether a customer 105 is allowed to access an auction 320 also determines whether the customer 105 may participate in the auction 340 and as a result the steps 340, 345, and 350 are no longer needed according to this embodiment. Allowing the customer 105 to participate in the auction 355 occurs whenever the customer 105 decides to participate in an auction 335 he/she is allowed to access 320. In an alternative embodiment shown in
a is an example data architecture for implementing a bidder restriction for an auction using a target group according to one embodiment of the present invention. The data row 400 is a simplified example (which is not normalized) of the data fields that may exist for an auction according to one embodiment of the present invention. This data row 400 may be stored in at least one of the seller's business information management system(s) 140 databases 141 and/or the internal auction application 120 database 130 and the data row 400 may provide the basic information associated with the auction. In the example shown in
b is an example data architecture for implementing a bidder restriction for an auction using a customer identifier instead of a target group according to one embodiment of the present invention. The data row 450 containing the main auction information does not include a target group identifier field 402 as shown in
A seller 110 may use the seller-side application 121 of the internal auction application 120 to create or generate an auction. This may be accomplished by selecting a create option link 505 on an appropriate screen 500 of the internal auction application 120, such as the auction listing screen 500 shown, or through the use of menu items (not shown), buttons (not shown), or other known means (not shown). An auction may also be created by selecting an existing auction and then selecting (e.g., clicking on) a “Copy” link 510, button (not shown), menu option (not shown), or other selection means (not shown). Once the seller 110 initiates the create auction process, an auction creation screen may be displayed.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60731250 | Oct 2005 | US |