Patent Application
20130132179
The present invention relates generally to e-commerce and, more particularly, to system and method for cross-promotion of group-buying products with non-group-buying products.
There are several models in B2C (business to consumer) commerce. A first model is the traditional brick and mortar stores and shops. In this model, consumers visit the stores to buy products or services (e.g., in a restaurant). Usually, most of the products or services are sold at regular price, with a small number of items sold at lower (promotional) price and for a limited time. This form of commerce has been in existence for thousands of years.
A second model is e-commerce via online websites and stores. A typical example of this is amazon.com, where consumers buy products online and receive the products through shipment. In general, this model does not cover local services (e.g., restaurants). The pricing structure is similar to brick and mortar stores in that most of the products are sold at regular price, with a small number of items sold at lower (promotional) price and for a limited time. This form of commerce has been in existence for the past two decades or so.
A third model is online group-buying. This is a model got popularized in the recent 2-3 years. It started by offering coupons for local services online, and more recently, has evolved to also cover delivered products at scale. Different from the above two models, all the products sold in a typical group-buying website are priced at deep discount, but a minimum number of buyers is required for a deal (the product or service being sold) to be valid. Another limitation of the group-buying model is that product selection at any particular time is limited. Compared with (possibly) hundreds of thousands of products on a regular e-commerce site, a group-buying website usually just has hundreds of products or less at any particular time.
In B2C commerce, recommendation is a very common technique. For example, when a customer buys a laptop, the merchant may recommend the customer to buy a mouse. In the online world, recommendations often appears as “Customer who bought this product also bought”, or “You may also like”. These recommendations are often computed base on sophisticated data mining algorithms, such as association rules, collaborative filtering, and/or personalization algorithms. Because of the importance of this technique, recommending systems has become a focused research area in recent years. Currently, however, recommendations on B2C websites are limited to products offered by the same website, and under the same B2C model. For example, a group-buying company may recommend other group-buying deals from the same company, and an online store may recommend other products from the same site.
A system and method of combining group buying with regular selling is provided. A group-buying company advertises a first product for sale from a group-buying website. The first product is a group-buying deal with deep discount offered for a short period of time. The group-buying websites also provides recommendation information on one or more products based on the first product. The one or more recommended products are supplied by another non-group-buying company. Consumers are able to purchase the one or more recommended products from the group-buying website.
In one embodiment, the non-group-buying company as a supplier opens up its inventory database to the group-buying company. The group-buying company determines the recommendation information based on data mining algorithms using the following information: relationship to the currently advertised group-buying product, personal information of the current buyer, collective buying behavior of users, and what is currently available in the inventory database. In addition, extended product selection is achieved by searching capability. Users can search the entire inventory database of the supplier from the same group-buying website and make payments from the same group-buying website.
In another embodiment, the non-group-buying company receives relevant information from the group-buying company and determines the recommendation information, which is sent back to the group-buying company. The non-group-buying company may have more control on the cross-promotion process including the payment process and even the display format of the recommendation.
In another preferred embodiment, the non-group-buying company is a local store that provides a large selection of products and services to local consumers. The recommended products/services may be determined based on buyer's location. After the buyer purchases a product or service from the group-buying website, the buyer gets a voucher or coupon code. The buyer then goes to the nearby local store to redeem the coupon (e.g., pick up the ordered product or enjoy the ordered service). This type of commerce model is a type of O2O (online-to-offline) transaction that has certain advantages by combining online and offline business, especially when location-based recommendation can be targeted to consumers located near the local store.
Other embodiments and advantages are described in the detailed description below. This summary does not purport to define the invention. The invention is defined by the claims.
The accompanying drawings, where like numerals indicate like components, illustrate embodiments of the invention.
Reference will now be made in detail to some embodiments of the invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
In the example of
The different modules within cross-promotion management module 105 are function modules that may be running on the same or different computer servers. The function modules, when executed by processor 102, allow online group-buying company 120 to advertise group-buying deals and recommend regular-selling products to consumers via communication between server computer 101 and other server computers. In one embodiment, various activities are performed by exchanging communication messages in online group-buying system 100 via WAN/LAN 150 (e.g., the computers are connected to WAN/LAN 150 via wired or wireless links 151, 152, and 153 respectively). In a first example, online group-buying company 120 receives inventory database from merchant 130 and exchanges recommendation information via communication between server computer 101 and server computer 132 (e.g., depicted by a dashed-line 154). In a second example, online group-buying company 120 advertises group-buying deals or recommends regular-selling products and delivers a coupon code to client computer 141 and/or mobile phone 142 for the sold item via webpage 122 (e.g., depicted by a dashed-line 155). In a third example, customer 140 redeems the coupon code for the purchased item provided by merchant 130 (e.g., depicted by a dashed-line 156). All the activities performed by the different parties—and all the information created and updated related to all the business transactions—are saved by server computer 101 onto DB104.
In one novel aspect, online group-buying company 120 combines group-buying deals with regular-selling products via cross-promotion management module 105. The online retailing method enables a group-buying company to cross promote non-group-buying products (e.g., products at regular price) on the group-buying website, and vice versa. The main benefit to consumers is extended product selection. Typically, a group-buying company only provides very limited (e.g., up to a few hundred) products from a group-buying site. With cross-promotion, consumers can enjoy the experience of selecting from hundreds of thousands or even more products from a single site. In the past, a store usually needs to make the trade-off between price and selection. If a store positions itself to offer good selection (e.g., Amazon.com), most products do not carry deep discounts, and this type of stores is suitable for “planned buying” (e.g., consumers know what they are looking for). On the other hand, if a store positions itself to offer good price (e.g., a group-buying site), the selection is limited, and this type of stores is suitable for “impulse buying” (e.g., consumers browse the products without clear intention before making purchases). By using the cross-promotion method, a consumer can go to a single site to browse good deals (impulse buying) as well as searching and finding any particular product through the same site (planned buying).
There are several variations and extensions to the above-described cross-promotion method. In one example, when the user clicks on the recommended product, the user is taken to webpage 301 for more product information or webpage 302 for payment information from the same group-buying website. In another example, the user is taken to a different target website to view more product information and/or to make payment. The target website is usually the site of the original product seller, or manufacturer, or service provider of the recommended product (e.g., merchant A or merchant B). The recommendation may be placed in other areas of webpage 300, such as the left side or the bottom, and may be placed in other webpages such as the home page and the payment page. There may be more than one recommendation boxes on the webpage, and the number of recommended products may vary. The recommended products may be a delivered product, or a local service, or a coupon for buying the product or service. Instead of buying products or services in the recommendation box directly, consumers may also be able to click a button (not shown) on the webpage to call/text the service provider to make reservations or ask questions.
Another major extension of the cross-promotion method is the search capability. For typically group-buying companies, product selection is very limited due to limited “shelf space” because of the nature of group-buying—products are offered for sale with very deep discount for a very short period of time (e.g., a few days or a week). As a result, a group-buying website typically does not need to support the search function. With cross-promotion, the search function becomes important because it enables extended product selection for consumers. A consumer can go to a single website to purchase a deeply discounted group-buying product as well as find any particular regular-selling product through a simple search. In the example of
The cross-promotion method requires cooperation between the group-buying company and the non-group-buying company that supplies the products. Currently in the group-buying industry, the way it works is that the group-buying company works with its supplier to identify/design one or a few products and offers them as group-buying deals to consumers. A few examples include: a group-buying company works with a restaurant to “design” a four-people set meal that includes four entrees and some desert, and sells the set meal as a deal; a group-buying company works with a luxury goods retailer to select a particular watch and offers it as a deal; a group-buying company works with a regular online store and offers a “$2 for $10” coupon for the store as a deal. In all of these cases, consumers only see the advertised deals on the group-buying site, and the other products or services offered by the same supplier are not available on the group-buying site. In one novel aspect, the group-buying company negotiates with its supplier to open its inventory database to the group-buying company, so that the group-buying company can recommend and sell any products in the inventory.
There are different ways in determining and providing recommendation information. In one embodiment illustrated in
Unlike
Because the group-buying company and the supplied work together to make profit from the cross-promoted products, they can use any preferred payment model between them, such as cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click (CPC), or cost per sales (CPS). In addition, the payment process can also have different variations. In one example, the payment process becomes a “plug-in”, so that when a consumer makes a payment, part or all of the sales proceeds go directly to the supplier's account. In another example, when a consumer makes a payment, all of the sales proceeds are held by a third party escrow account. Later on, the fund in the escrow account is split between the group-buying company and its supplier.
In one preferred embodiment, the non-group-buying company is a local supplier that supplies the group-buying product/service. The local supplier also has a local department store that sells a much larger selection of products and services. The local department store first negotiates with the group-buying company to offer group-buying deals. In addition, the local department store also opens up its inventory database to the group-buying company for cross-promotion. In one example, when a buyer browses for group-buying deals from the group-buying website, other related products available from the local department store are recommended to the buyers. In addition, the buyer is able to search the entire inventory database of the local department store. In one specific embodiment, the local department store is located near the buyer. After the buyer purchases a product or service from the group-buying website, the buyer gets a voucher or coupon code. The buyer then goes to the local department store to redeem the coupon (e.g., pick up the ordered product or enjoy the ordered service).
This type of commerce model is a type of O2O (online-to-offline) transaction that covers offline commerce. O2O has certain advantages by combining online and offline business because the recommended products may be determined based on buyer's location. Because regular-selling products are recommended to local customers near the department store, it is more likely to attract more customers because of the convenient location (e.g., no shipping cost, being able to try at the store, and guaranteed availability, etc.). Furthermore, under this model, the group-buying company can also provide value-added services to its suppliers. For example, through data mining, the group-buying company may discover that a particular supplier should offer a particular slow-selling product as a group-buying deal to make room for more popular products, and pass this advice to the supplier as value-added service.
In one or more exemplary embodiments, the functions described above may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the functions may be stored on or transmitted over as one or more instructions or code on a computer-readable (processor-readable) medium. Computer-readable media include both computer storage media and communication media including any medium that facilitates transfer of a computer program from one place to another. A storage media may be any available media that can be accessed by a computer. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that both can be used to carry or store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures, and can be accessed by a computer. In addition, any connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium. For example, if the software is transmitted from a website, server, or other remote source using a coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, digital subscriber line (DSL), or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave, then the coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, DSL, or wireless technologies are included in the definition of medium. Disk and disc, as used herein, include compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk, and blue-ray disc where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.
Although the present invention has been described in connection with certain specific embodiments for instructional purposes, the present invention is not limited thereto. For example, the idea of combining group-buying and non-group-buying products can be adopted by non-group-buying sites. That is, a regular e-commerce site can display group-buying products together with regular products. Accordingly, various modifications, adaptations, and combinations of various features of the described embodiments can be practiced without departing from the scope of the invention as set forth in the claims.
