WO2002044924A1

WO2002044924A1 - Method and apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network

Info

Publication number: WO2002044924A1
Application number: PCT/US2001/045776
Authority: WO
Inventors: Glen R. Zwart
Original assignee: Galileo International, Inc.
Priority date: 2000-11-03
Filing date: 2001-11-02
Publication date: 2002-06-06
Also published as: KR20030078863A; AU2002241561B2; JP2004523822A; CA2427682A1; EP1344141A4; CN1484794A; AU4156102A; EP1344141A1

Abstract

A method and apparatus (10) for tracking consumer selections over a computer network is described herein and comprises a remote computer terminal (12) connected to a network of computers wherein the consumer can access an industry centric web portal (14) having links to various vendor products and services over the network (16). A user identification token is generated by the web portal to identify the consumer so that each site visited on the computer network (16) can also identify the consumer and partake in an advisement system. According to the advisement system the participating vendor sites (18, 20, 23) located on the computer network identify the visiting consumer by his/her user identification token and advice the industry centric web portal (14) as to what selections the consumer has made while visiting the vendor's site (14). The advisement information may comprise such things as what the product/service is, how much it cost, how much tax was paid, what dates it is good for, and so on. The web portal receives the advisement information and creates a consumer product record (CPR) pertaining to the selections made by the identified consumer.

Description

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TRACKING CONSUMER SELECTIONS OVER A COMPUTER NETWORK

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for tracking consumer purchases and selections over a computer network, and more particularly to an industry centric computer portal capable of displaying and managing customer product records relating to consumer purchases and selections made at related industry computer network sites.

Computer network commerce, such as Internet e-commerce, is becoming more and more important for retailers or vendors of various goods and services. In fact, many have predicted that companies who fail to provide such services will lose a significant portion of their market share and perhaps close doors due to lost sales. One of the first problems experienced when trying to develop a network of computers that would allow e- commerce was the fact that the network itself would be made up of many different interconnected computers using many different types of software and operating systems. One of the more challenging tasks associated with transmitting documents from one computer using one type of software to another computer using a different type of software is trying to maintain the structure of the document as the data propagates from computer to computer. For example, a document including a title, chapter and body of text can be transmitted from one computer to another, but if the document loses the format of the title, chapter and body of text and simply transmits and displays everything as text, it becomes more difficult to read and less appealing to the person reading it. This problem is compounded when the information being transmitted is information regarding the vendor's products/services, which the vendor hopes to sell to the information recipient or consumer. If the consumer has difficulty reading the information, or the information is not aesthetically pleasing, he or she is not likely to purchase the vendor's goods or services.

As a solution to the problem of transmitting information while maintaining the integrity of the document's structure, content, and style, many have turned to the computer programming technique of using markup languages that treat the structure, content, and style of a document differently. The term markup originally referred to handwritten notations made to a typewritten text explaining to a typesetter such things as what typeface to use. To a computer programmer knowledgeable in today's computer network systems and the Internet, markup refers to everything in a document that is not content, (i.e., terms describing the purpose of the text and/or style of the text). In 1986, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published an international standard for computer document markup called Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

SGML prescribes a standard format for embedding descriptive markup within a document for transmission over a computer network and for reading by any computer without losing the document stracture. In short, SGML allows documents to be created that are independent of any specific hardware or software. SGML accomplishes this by breaking documents up into three parts: structure, content and style. According to SGML, a Document Type Definition (DTD) is created specifying the structure of the document and providing a framework for the various elements or parts that make up the document. Tags are applied to the content of the document through a process called "tagging", and identify the content's position within the DTD, (i.e., is it part of the title, chapter, body, etc.). Typically, the style of the document is determined by the software package used to read the document, (i.e., Microsoft Word^®, Corel WordPerfect^®, etc.).

Although SGML is an effective tool for describing the content and stracture of digital documents, it requires a considerable amount of markup and knowledge about

SGML generalizations. The language or protocol currently used to transfer documents on the Internet can be considered an extremely pared-down version of SGML called Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), which requires less markup and knowledge of SGML's generalizations. HTML breaks documents up into three parts: tags, comments, and text. The

HTML tags are used to define the type styles and provide for hyperlinking (providing a link to route the viewer to another page of information located somewhere within the network). HTML also allows the HTML author or programmer to insert comments within the document so that additional information regarding the document, tagging, text, etc. can be made. Like the tags, the comments are not visible to a person viewing the document over the network unless they view the HTML coding. The text merely refers to the content of the document.

HTML has^' served well as a markup language, but is not without its own faults and weaknesses. For example, in HTML, both the tag semantics and the tag set are fixed. Meaning the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Internet browser vendors, and other groups that use and have a say in how the Internet operates, must constantly work on extending the definition of HTML to cover new tags and technologies that are desired by Internet users. In addition, the rigid rales and complexities of HTML require many HTML authors to figure out ways of providing special effects while still satisfying the predefined HTML document types and markup elements. In order to break through the limitations of HTML, a new markup language called extensible Markup Language (XML) is being used which does not have a fixed or predefined format and is designed to use more of SGML's flexibility. Specifically, XML provides a facility to define tags and the structural relationships between them, and gives XML authors the flexibility to design their own markup. Therefore, the information content can be richer and easier to use. Like HTML however, XML does not require as much markup as SGML and/or knowledge of SGML's generalizations and is much easier to implement than SGML. A fully conformant SGML system will be able to read and understand an XML document, but is not needed in order to display the document. XML has been designed to work with or without a DTD (meaning you can invent markup without having to define it foπnally), but DTDs are recommended in order to maintain the ability to automatically control the structuring of additional documents.

Although the application of markup languages have solved the problem of transmitting information while maintaining its stracture, content, and style, a growing problem associated with the rise in popularity of e-commerce is that there is no cohesiveness between transactions for the consumer, allowing him or her to identify what goods or services have been selected (e.g., purchased, reserved, etc.) over the computer network. For example, a consumer may not be able to shop at several different vendor websites making various selections or purchases, while maintaining a record of what has been purchased or selected. This can leave the consumer unsure of what has already been purchased and/or selected, and can result in the consumer either failing to buy additional items or buying duplicate items that will have to be returned. Prior to the development of e-commerce, a similar problem occurred in the travel industry, in which consumers would often book airline reservations with a travel agency and coordinate car rental, hotel reservations, etc.. Often times one vacation or trip could involve a large number of selections, making it hard for the consumer and/or the travel agent to keep track of all that was purchased or reserved. Such problems often occur in vertical market systems or market segments in which various vendors provide different goods and services which are related in some respect. For example, a travel market segment includes every business the traveler may need to deal with from the beginning to end of his or her trip, such as air carriers, hotels and resorts, car rental agencies, as well as various entertainment groups providing such things as golf tee times, tours, meals, flowers, musical or theatrical events, and so on. Such broad vertical markets necessitate that records of consumer selections among all of the various goods and services be maintained so that the information can easily be accessed at some later time or date.

The Applicant's assignee solved the problem of keeping track of such information in the vertical market relating to the travel industry by creating a computerized reservation system (CRS) database, also known as a global distribution system (GDS). With the CRS database, diverse products can be selected by consumers while providing the constant ability to track such selections through a single entity known as a passenger name record (PNR). The PNR allows the consumer to retrieve and view any or all of the selections he or she has made at a later date. This review may contain information about the actual selections made by the consumer, such as the price, date of use, date of purchase, tax paid, etc.. Therefore, the service provided by the CRS database offers a centralized record of all consumer selections which the consumer can access to determine what selections were made, thereby eliminating the problem of keeping track of such information. Today, a similar problem exists with respect to e-commerce. Specifically, consumer selections made over the Internet are tracked individually and are managed as individual entities.

Attempts to provide consumers with some information regarding e-commerce purchases and reservations have been made, but typically only display the information relating to selections that are about to be purchased from one particular vendor or supplier. For example, many Internet sites provide consumers with a "shopping cart" in which products the consumer intends to purchase are placed, and with which a list of items about to be purchased can be reviewed. Unfortunately these types of services are only good for providing information regarding what items have been selected to be purchased, not what items have been purchased. Another problem associated with shopping carts is that consumers rarely purchase all goods and/or services from a single supplier. This may be attributable to the fact that no single e-commerce vendor or e-tailer offers a complete selection of goods and or services needed by the consumer. This may also be due to the fact consumers prefer shopping among a variety of suppliers prior to making a purchase so that they can ensure they are receiving the best or biggest value. Therefore, no matter how large the e-tailer is, its shopping cart will not contain all of the purchases the consumer makes over the computer network.

Other Internet sites allow the consumer to type in a number or password identified- with a particular consumer selection that will call up a screen indicating what items have been selected and what stage the order is in, (i.e., have the items been built, shipped, etc.). Unfortunately, such services require the consumer to return to each individual vendor's site in order to determine what selections were made. More often than not, the consumer does not have time to return to each vendor's site to check what selections were made, and/or does not have his or her order number readily available every time they wish to see what selection was made. Still other Internet sites offer records of sales by generating e-mail responses to the consumer confirming that an order has been received and/or shipped. One problem with this type of record keeping is that each vendor sends its own confirmation e-mail to the consumer and, depending on the number of sales/selections made, such e-mails can add up to an amount of paper that simply does not assist the consumer in determining what has been ordered/selected. In addition, e-mails are not always kept nor are they always readily available. For example, some consumers may not be able to access their e-mail from outside their home or work making it impossible to review the e-mail at certain times.

Another problem associated with tracking consumer selections over computer networks is that the selection may be updated or its status may change over time. For example, when an airfare is selected by a consumer several details pertaining to the flight may change over time, including: time changes, date changes, flight status changes (i.e., on time, delayed, canceled, etc.), as well as others. These updates or status changes may be forgotten by the consumer or may not have been received by the consumer. In addition, the consumer may make changes to his or her itinerary causing the flight number, time, date, etc. to change. Furthermore, the information pertaining to the consumer selection may only have a limited period of usefulness and need not be kept. For example, if an airplane ticket has been selected by the consumer, the record of such ticket may become an unwanted or unneeded record shortly after the ticket has been used. Without being able to track the consumer selections made over a computer network, or further being able to track and update such consumer selections and any updates thereto, e-commerce will likely remain an unattractive alternative to many consumers.

Thus it is apparent that a need exists for a method and apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network. A need also exists for an apparatus that is capable of tracking and updating consumer selections over a computer network. A further need exists for a system that is capable of tracking date of use/expiration data pertaining to a consumer's selection made over a computer network and a system that is capable of updating its tracking information according to the date of use/expiration data.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An apparatus embodying the present invention provides a method and apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network such that the consumer need not return to each individual vendor's site on the network to determine what selections have been made. The apparatus achieves this by providing a remote computer terminal connected to a network of computers wherein the consumer can access various information and make various selections from the network of computers. The apparatus further comprises an industry centric web portal located within the network of computers that is capable of displaying and managing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections made over the network. The industry centric web portal provides at least one link to a vendor site located within the network so that consumers can maneuver about the network more efficiently. A user identification token is generated by the web portal and identifies the consumer so that each site visited on the computer network can identify the consumer. The apparatus further comprises an advisement system that is capable of identifying the consumer by the user identification token and notifying the industry centric web portal of any selections made by the identified consumer. The industry centric web portal in turn stores the consumer selection information in what is called a consumer product record (CPR). The CPR can be accessed by the consumer to view information pertaining to previous consumer selections made over the computer network and may provide such additional features as links to the vendor sites where each consumer selection was made and/or pictures of any products selected while at a vendor site. A method of tracking consumer selections over a computer network according to the invention begins with using the remote computer terminal to access the industry centric web portal. The method of tracking consumer selections over a computer network involves the additional step of identifying the consumer once they have accessed the industry centric web portal. The web portal identifies the consumer by generating a user identification token that will accompany the user about the network of computers. A unique consumer (or user identification) token is generated whenever a new consumer session is created, and is stored within the session information for the consumer so that all participating websites in the transaction can identify the consumer. The user identification token allows each vendor site to identify the consumer and may further allow the vendor site to personalize its content and/or presentation for the particular consumer identified. More particularly, the user identification token is passed from one web site to another by use of hyper text transfer protocol GET or POST commands. Since the industry centric web portal is capable of displaying and managing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections, the web portal will determine if the consumer has any consumer product records and will display what it finds. The vendor sites participate in the method of tracking consumer selections over a network by advising the industry centric web portal as to any selections made by the consumer while visiting the vendor's site. The advisement is received by the web portal and checked for accuracy or verified so that a consumer product record can be created or updated. The method may also entail having the web portal issue an acknowledgment to the vendor site indicating that the advisement was received and/or indicating whether the information was complete/accurate.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings, in which: FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an apparatus embodying the present invention;

FIGS. 2 and 3 are Document Type Definitions for markup documents used in accordance with the invention shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 4 is a process flow chart embodying the present invention; and While the invention will be described in connection with a preferred method and embodiment, it will be understood that it is not intended to limit the invention to that method and embodiment. On the contrary, it is intended to cover all alternatives, modifications and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION A method and apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network is described herein and comprises a remote computer terminal connected to a network of computers wherein the consumer can access an industry centric web portal having links to various vendor products and services over the network. A user identification token is generated by the web portal to identify the consumer so that each site visited on the computer network can also identify the consumer and partake in an advisement system. According to the advisement system the participating vendor sites located on the computer network identify the visiting consumer by his or her user identification token and advise the industry centric web portal as to what selections the consumer has made while visiting the vendor's site. The advisement information may comprise such things as what the product/service is, how much it cost, how much tax was paid, what dates it is good for, and so on. The web portal receives the advisement information and creates a consumer product record (CPR) pertaining to the selections made by the identified consumer. The CPR is a central record of all selections the consumer has made over the computer network and can be accessed by the consumer to review the selections. The CPR may also contain links to the various vendor sites where the consumer selections were made and/or provide pictures of any products the consumer selected. Referring now to the drawings and especially to FIG. 1, in which a block diagram of an apparatus embodying the present invention is generally shown therein and identified by reference numeral 10. The apparatus 10 includes a remote computer terminal 12 with which a consumer can access an industry centric web portal 14 via a computer network 16. One example of a computer network is the Internet, which is by far and away the world's largest computer network. Other examples of networks include geographically localized networks such as Local Area Networks (LANs) or larger networks such as Wide Area Networks (WANs). The industry centric web portal 14 has links to vendor A's site 18, vendor B's site 20 and vendor n's site 22. Each vendor site 18, 20 and 22 is located within the network of computers 16 and typically contains information regarding the vendor and the vendor's products and services. Nendor "n" indicates that any number of sites may be available provided they fall within the computer network's capacity of operation.

The industry centric web portal 14 identifies the consumer by creating a user identification token 24 that will accompany the consumer about the computer network 16. The user identification token 24 is stored in a file or markup language document 26 that travels with the consumer from site to site across the network and is "tagged" according to a standard markup language and naming convention so that each vendor site 18, 20 and 22 can locate and identify the consumer's user identification token 24. The vendor sites 18, 20 and 22 may also be capable of personalizing their content and/or presentation for the consumer based on the information they read from the user identification token 24. More particularly, a unique consumer token or user identification token 24 is generated whenever a new consumer session is created. (A consumer session comprises a set of consecutive transactions occurring from a single consumer over a range of websites or pages where awareness of such transactions can be tracked.) The user identification token 24 is passed from one website to another by use of a hyper text transfer protocol

GET or POST command, and is stored within the session information for the consumer so that all participating websites in the transaction can identify the consumer. The session information itself is stored within a mark-up language document capable of being read by all of the participating websites. Both the consumer session and its unique user identification token 24 are destroyed after a user discontinues further transactions and a specified time frame has expired.

The markup language document 26 is used as part of an advisement system in which each vendor site advises the industry centric web portal 14 about consumer selections made during the consumer's visit to its site. More particularly, the vendor site 18, 20 or 22 updates the markup language document 26 to indicate what the selection was, who the vendor was, who the consumer was, and can provide a variety of additional information such as what the purchase confirmation number is, how many units were purchased, what the price was, what the tax was, whether or not there was any service charge, what dates the products are good for or are to be used by, a link to the product image, etc.. As such, the markup language document can be set up to track any or all information pertaining to the consumer's selection. The advisement service may be based on a traditional communication protocol (i.e., Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)), such as the industry standard port eighty implementations, or alternate to provide a level of obscurity to the general public. A secure socket layer (SSL) certificate server can be utilized to provide more secured communications. In turn, the industry centric web portal 14 checks the received markup language document 26 or request document for completeness and/or validates certain information contained therein. After this has been completed, the web portal 14 stores the received information into a centralized repository 28 as a consumer product record (CPR). The CPR may be accessed by the consumer through the industry centric web portal and may allow the consumer to view all or part of the information received from the vendor updated markup language document 26 or vendor advisement. In addition to this information, the CPR may provide a link to the vendor's site so that the consumer can go back to the vendor's site to make additional selections or modify their previous selection. A vendor provided icon and description may be used to display each product item that is contained in the centralized repository for the current consumer. This aids in the industry centric web portal's ability to raise revenue in that it brings people back to its site on the computer network increasing the number of hits received by the web portal thereby allowing it to charge more for advertisements and referrals to other vendor sites.

The central repository 28 contains the information relating to the consumer selections and provides storage and retrieval interfaces for internal portal applications so that the consumer product record can be reviewed by the consumer at the industry centric web portal 14. The consumer product record can be stored indefinitely, or can expire after a predetermined amount of time has passed, (i.e., x number of days after the last day the product is good for, or is to be used by). For example, in the airfare ticket selection example mentioned above, the CPR may be updated to eliminate the record pertaining to a flight three days after the ticket was to be used. Alternatively, an intermediate level of consumer product record management may be use wherein the consumer product record is considered a historic record after a predetermined amount of time has passed. The historic record can be pulled up by the consumer on command, but otherwise would not be displayed on the standard consumer product record. Product record expiration length may be controlled by the portal administrator and will contain conditional aging logic related to product type and consumer support requirements. Maintenance utility applications are used to maintain the CPR records accurately so items that have been marked as expiring after a predetermined usage/passage of time are correctly marked as expired or moved to the historical record after the such usage/passage of time has occurred. For example, if a consumer purchased an airplane ticket and indicated that it is to be used by Saturday, the maintenance utilities could automatically identify that ticket as being expired and/or list it in the historical record.

The web portal 14 may also be configured to respond to the vendor site 18, 20 or 22 with an acknowledgment 30 that the markup language document 26 has been received and/or whether it was acceptable. The industry centric web portal's acknowledgment 30 may contain additional information including the transaction identification number or purchase confirmation number, an acknowledgment indicator (i.e., whether the markup language document has been accepted or denied), an acknowledgment description, or other information pertaining to the tracked consumer selection. hi addition to being capable of displaying and managing past consumer selections made over the computer network, the web portal 14 may also have functional vendor icons corresponding to the provided vendor features for such things as cancel, update, review, and so on. For example, the web portal 14 may allow the consumer to cancel a selection from a particular vendor or cancel the consumer product record itself; it may also allow the consumer to update the consumer product record for particular vendors; or it may simply allow the consumer to review his or her product record for a particular vendor. These features may be performed by either the consumer or the vendor. In another example, an airline ticket vendor may adjust the time, date, flight number, or other detail pertaining to a flight a consumer has purchased or selected at the vendor's site. Likewise, the consumer may change his or her itinerary with respect to times, dates, flight numbers, etc. The web portal 14 updates the CPR so that such adjustments or changes are reflected, and/or the vendor supporting the original purchase can optionally provide pre-populated computer network addresses (such as a universal resource locators (URLs)) for these functions which will be linked to in the consumer session markup language document to offer as corresponding feature icons. Turning now to FIGS. 2 and 3, in which Document Type Definitions (DTDs) defining the elements, structures and rales for markup documents used in accordance with the invention are generally shown therein and identified by reference numerals 50 and 60. The DTDs 50 and 60 describe the stracture of a document, much like a database schema describes the types of information it handles and the relationships between fields. Some markup language developers are dissatisfied with the syntax of the markup declarations described in the specifications for the available markup languages (e.g., HTML, XML, etc.), and have proposed having the description of the document type's stracture (its schema) comprised in markup language as well. This would make it easier to edit and manipulate the schema with regular document manipulation tools and would require less error checking code to be written. Regardless, the DTDs 50 and 60 need not be provided to use XML. Such use of XML is called DTDless and can only be well formed XML, not valid XML. Well formed XML can give a general idea of what the XML document looks like, but it leaves room for doubt. On the other hand, use of a DTD eliminates any doubt by providing stringent standards or definitions for the XML document and ensures that valid XML will be used. DTD 50 or 60 may provide framework for the elements that constitute the markup language document or file 26, and may accompany it wherever it goes so that it can be read independent of the software or hardware used. In effect, DTDs 50 or 60 provide applications with advanced notice of what names and structures can be used in a particular document type.

The first line of the DTD 50 notifies the application that this document is an XML document using version 1.0. The remaining information indicates that the text of the document is in U.S. ASCII format. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for hiformation Interchange. This is one of the most universal coding methods for converting letters, numbers, punctuation and control codes into digital form, hi short, the purpose of the first line is to inform the application what format the document is in and how it is to be read so that the application will know to use it like XML 1.0. The next six lines indicate that file giport.dtd is version 1.0 and contains the document entitled "DTD for merchandise tracking portal". The eighth line notifies the application that the "root node of the merchandise advisement" follows. The ninth line shows the DTD's most basic part, the "element". An element defines the markup tag's name and form. As indicated here, the element's name is ADVISEMENT and any child markup tags found within this element are named ADVISE. The "+" indicates that the ADVISE tag must appear one or more times. The tenth line indicates another DTD fundamental called the "attribute". An attribute is a description given to an element to further define it and attributes are declared in attribute lists. According to this line, the attribute VENDORID is attached to the element ADVISEMENT and is regular text as indicated by CD AT A. hiformation pertaining to the attribute VENDORID is required in order for the document to be accepted by the industry centric web portal 14. The eleventh line shows element ADVISE 's value EMPTY. The twelfth through twenty-eighth lines indicate that the attributes GCTOKEN, ACTION, CONF, UMTS, PRICE, TAX, SVCCHG, URL_CANCEL, URLJJPDATE, URL_REVIEW, DATE_1 , DATE_2, DESCRIPTION, URL CONJMG, URL_PROD_IMG, LAT and LONG are attached to the element ADVISE and are regular text (CD ATA). All but URLJJPDATE, DATE_2, LAT, and LONG are required in order for the document to be accepted by the industry centric web portal 14. The first line of the DTD 60 notifies the application that this document is an XML document using version 1.0, and that the text of the document is in U.S. ASCII format. Again, the purpose of the first line is to inform the application what format the document is in and how it is to be read so that the application will know to use it like XML 1.0. The next six lines indicate that file giport.dtd is version 1.0 and contains the document entitled "DTD for merchandise tracking portal". The eighth line notifies the application that the "root node of the merchandise advisement" follows. The ninth line shows the DTD's most basic part, the "element". An element defines the markup tag's name and form. As indicated here, the element's name is ADVISEMENT and any child markup tags found within this element are named ADVISE. The "+" indicates that the ADVISE tag must appear one or more times. The tenth line indicates another DTD fundamental called the "attribute". An attribute is a description given to an element to further define it and attributes are declared in attribute lists. According to this line, the attribute VENDORID is attached to the element ADVISEMENT and is regular text as indicated by CD ATA. Information pertaining to the attribute VENDORID is required in order for the document to be accepted by the industry centric web portal 14. The eleventh line shows element AD VISE' s value EMPTY. The twelfth through thirty-fourth lines indicate that the attributes ACTION, CONFIRMATION ©, RECLOC, CUSTJD, PROD_TYPE_CODE, UNITS, UNtT JPRICE, TAX, SVC_CHARGE, DESCRIPTION, CURRENCY, START DATETIME, ENDJDATETME, GEO_CODE, ORIGIN LOCATION, DESTINATION, FREEFORM, TICKET_DATA, CANCEL JJRL, UPDATE JJRL, MORE JNFO JJRL, GRAPHIC_SM_URL, and GRAPHICJVID JJRL are attached to the element ADVISE and are regular text (CDATA). The first twelve (from ACTION to STARTJDATETIME) are required in order for the document to be accepted by the industry centric web portal 14. These fields are only exemplary and may contain/request additional or different information. Referring now to FIG. 4, in which a process flow chart for an apparatus and method for tracking consumer selections over a computer network is generally shown therein and identified by reference numeral 100. In step 1 of the process flow chart 100, a consumer 102 accesses an industry centric web portal 104 via a computer network, which in turn identifies the consumer 102 by generating a user identification token. In step 2, the user identification token will accompany the user about the network so that each vendor site 106 visited by the consumer 102 can identify the consumer 102. In step 3, the consumer 102 accesses a vendor site 106 located within the network via a link provided on the industry centric web portal 104. hi step 4, the vendor site 106 updates the markup language document accompanying the consumer 102 to indicate what selections the consumer 102 has made as well as providing a variety of additional information pertaining to the selection. The web portal 104 records the information received in the markup language document, creates a CPR listing.the information received, validates the information received and generates a response in step 5. The web portal response may indicate that the information received contained errors or was incomplete, or it may indicate that the information received was complete and valid. In step 6, the vendor site 106 issues a confirmation to the consumer 102 that the consumer's selection has been received. The consumer 102 may now return to the web portal 104, determine what other vendor sites they wish to visit, and link to that particular vendor's site. At this point, the entire advisement process is repeated.

Thus it is apparent that there has been provided, in accordance with the invention, a method and apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network that fully satisfies the objects, aims, and advantages set forth above. While the invention has been described in conjunction with specific embodiments thereof, it is evident that many alternatives, modifications, and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of the foregoing description. Accordingly, it is intended to embrace all such alternatives, modifications, and variations as fall within the spirit and broad scope of the appended claims.

Claims

CLAIMSWhat is claimed is:

1. An apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network, the apparatus comprising: a remote computer terminal connected to a network of computers wherein the consumer can access various information and make various selections from the network of computers; an industry centric web portal located within the network of computers that is capable of displaying and managing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections made over the computer network and wherein the industry centric web portal provides links to various information located within the network of computers; a user identification token stored in a tag accompanying the user about the computer network for identifying the consumer; and an advisement system capable of identifying the consumer by the user identification token and notifying the industry centric web portal of any selections made by the identified consumer.

2. An apparatus according to claim 1, the apparatus further comprising: a centralized repository for storing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections made over the computer network.

3. A method of tracking consumer selections over the Internet, the method comprising: using a remote computer terminal to access via the Internet an industry centric web portal which is capable of displaying and managing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections; identifying the consumer by generating a user identification token that will accompany the user about the Internet in the form of a markup tag; providing at least one link to another URL somewhere on the industry centric web portal; selecting one of the provided URL links; linking to the selected URL via the Internet; advising the centric web portal about the consumer's actions over the Internet via an XML advisement service.

4. A method according to claim 3, wherein the selected URL is capable of personalizing its content based on information obtained from the user identification token.

5. A method according to claim 3, wherein the industry centric web portal is capable of displaying and managing consumer product records pertaining to past consumer selections for a predetermined time period.

6. A method of generating advertising revenue, the method comprising: providing an apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network wherein a consumer can access a web portal to review selections the consumer made in the past over the network; providing links on the web portal to various vendor sites located on the computer network wherein various goods and services are offered to the consumer on the vendor sites; and charging the vendors who have a link on the web portal an advertisement fee.

7. A method of generating advertising revenue, the method comprising: providing an apparatus for tracking consumer selections over a computer network wherein a consumer can access a web portal to review selections the consumer made in the past over the network; providing links on the web portal to various vendor sites located on the computer network wherein various goods and services are offered to the consumer on the vendor sites; and charging the vendors who have a link on the web portal a commission fee corresponding to any monies the vendor receives from the consumer who linked from the web portal to the vendor's site.