Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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PRINTED COUPONS WITH EMBEDDED DISCOUNTS FOR ONLINE PURCHASE9~
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application claims priority of co-pending U.S.
application serial number 08/967,383, filed November 8, 1997;
and claims priority of co-pending U.S. application serial
number 09/023,918, filed on February 13, 1998; and claims
priority of co-pending U.S. provisional application serial
number 60/052,597, filed on July 15, 1997; all of which are
assigned to the assignee of the present application and
incorporated by reference herein.
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present application relates to online commerce,
and in particular to the use of printed coupons having
purchase discounts embedded in machine-readable symbols such
as bar codes that enable a user to obtain discounts for online
purchases.
BACKGROUND ART
Online commerce, in particular so called electronic
commerce or "e-commerce", has promulgated due to the increased
use of open online systems such as the Internet, as well as
proprietary online systems such as AMERICA ONLINE and
COMPUSERVE. E-Commerce may be considered to be a method of
executing a transaction by enabling two computers to exchange
certain information such that a vendor will receive value in
the form of payment, and the purchaser will, in exchange,
receive value in the form of products or services. Thus, for
example, a typical e-commerce transaction on the Internet
would involve a consumer accessing a vendor's server computer
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would involve a consumer accessing a vendor's server computer
through his World Wide Web browser, and downloading a page
from that server that offers a lamp for twenty dollars. The
consumer could purchase the lamp by entering his credit card
information (optionally in a secure manner such as through
encryption) into his browser and transmitting the information
to the vendor's server by the Internet. The server computer
would validate the transaction by clearing the credit card
number with a central clearinghouse, and after receiving
approval for payment, arrange to have the lamp shipped to the
consumer. As in a direct mail purchase scenario, the consumer
receives the lamp in due course and is billed on his credit
card, and the vendor receives payment from the credit card
company for the transaction. Of course, there are numerous
ways to execute payment for the goods and services that offer
various degrees of security and ease of use, but the paradigm
of electronic goods selection and payment remains constant for
any such type of payment methodology.
The above scenario has become popular for the
increased convenience and lower cost it provides for both the
consumer as well as the vendors. Any consumer having access
to the Internet could use the system, and any vendor having
access to the Internet can make his goods or services
available for purchase. This scenario does not allow,
however, for the use of a purchase incentive system such as
coupons that are prevalent in marketing today. That is, the
coupon system, that gives certain consumers discounts for
select products at the point of purchase, is not provided for
in the e-commerce system. Although a vendor could provide
discounts to online purchasers at the point of sale (i.e after
he has logged on to the site), there exists no method of
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providing coupon-type incentives to consumers to go online and
actually initiate the online transaction to receive the
discount for the online purchase.
It is therefore an object of the invention to
provide a system that allows vendors to provide purchase
incentives such as coupons to users to entice them to access a
vendor's Internet site and execute an online transaction.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a
system that allows the dissemination of traditional printed
coupons that could be linked to incentives for online
purchases.
It is a further object of the present invention to
provide such a system that allows for targeted couponing such
that certain targeted consumers would receive a first type of
purchase discount, and certain other targeted consumers would
receive a different type of purchase discount.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is a method for providing
purchase incentives or discounts in an online e-commerce
transaction comprising the steps of printing a discount
coupon, the coupon comprising human readable information
describing at least part of the incentive or offer, product
information, vendor information, or the like, and a machine-
readable symbol such as a linear or two-dimensional bar code
symbol. The symbol is encoded with data fields comprising a
first identifier associated with the Internet Protocol address
of a vendor's host computer, optionally, a second identifier
associated with a discount amount to be applied to a product
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or group of products, optionally, a third identifier
associated with the consumer for whom the discount coupon has
been targeted, and optionally, an instruction for a computer
to launch a client program enabling access to the online
S system, such as a World Wide Web browser program. The method
also comprises the steps of disseminating the discount coupon
to a targeted consumer or group of consumers, or optionally to
the public in general; scanning the machine-readable coupon
symbol at the consumer's computer; decoding the scanned data
to generate the vendor's IP address; launching the client
program to enable access to the online system; communicating
with the vendor's host computer by utilizing the decoded IP
address; and downloading a file from the vendor's host
computer associated with the scanned coupon, the file
containing information relating to the discount to be applied
to enable the user to make a purchase decision. If the user
elects to make an online purchase, then said election is
communicated to the vendor's computer, the discount related to
the coupon is applied and a payment and delivery process is
executed to enable the vendor to collect the purchase price
and the user to obtain the purchased product.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
These and other objects and features of the
invention will be described in relation to the drawings.
Figure 1 is a block diagram of the system of the
present invention;
Figure 2 is a flowchart of the coupon generation
process; and
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Figure 3 is a flowchart of the coupon scanning and
online redemption process.
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
The preferred embodiment of the present invention
will now be described in detail with reference to the Figures.
The dotted line portion ("Online Coupon generation") relates
to the generating and printing of e-commerce coupons 2 that
will be useful for scanning an providing a discount for an
online e-commerce transaction. The coupon is comprised of two
portions; a human-readable portion 2a and a machine-readable
portion 2b such as a bar code symbol. The human-readable
portion contains information such as text and/or graphics that
typically are found on a coupon or other type of incentive or
advertisement such as the vendor's name, product information,
etc. The coupon 2 should also inform the user that the
scanning of the bar code on his computer will enable a
discount for an online purchase. The discount amount may be
shown, or it optionally may be not shown so that the user is
enticed to go online in order to learn the discount amount at
the online "point-of purchase".
The machine-readable portion 2b would typically be a
linear or two-dimensional bar code such as a PDF417 bar code,
which is well known in the art. Of course, any bar code
having enough information density to be encoded with the
required information, and potentially the optional information
to be described herein, can be used within the spirit and
scope of the present invention. In addition, other types of
w 30 machine-readable symbols or tokens may be used as well.
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The bar code symbol is encoded with various fields
of information, depending on the mode utilized by the vendor
printing the coupon. The data fields 4 that may be encoded
into the bar code symbol are described as follows:
1. Vendor IP address - The Internet Protocol (IP)
address is encoded in order to enable the user's computer to
access automatically the vendor's host computer. The IP
address may be directly encoded in IP protocol (aa.bb.cc.dd
format), or the URL of the vendor may be used
(http://www.company.com), which must be resolved into the IP
address by the Internet Domain Name system as well known in
the art .
Referring to co-pending U.S. patent application
serial no. 08/967,383, which is incorporated by reference
herein, a two-dimensional bar code such as a PDF417 bar code
symbol may be used to advantageously encode a relatively large
amount of data, including the URL of the target vendor as well
as the resource identifier that indicates to the vendor's
server computer the identity of the resource (i.e. product
offer) to be utilized, demographic information related to the
user to whom the coupon offer as been targeted, and an
optional encryption key that may be used by the client (user)
computer to encode his credit card number for use in executing
the online transaction. A targeted discount amount may also
be included so that different users can be provided with
different discounts or other types of incentives.
The inclusion in the bar code symbol of an
encryption key is especially useful in this embodiment, since
it allows the user to encrypt sensitive information such as
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his credit card number, and then transmit it with the http
request for the product offer over the Internet. Since the
vendor knows the encryption key that the user has used (either
because the vendor distributes only one such key or because he
can look up the key locally or remotely by using the
associated demographic information received with the http
request), he can easily decrypt the credit card number (or
other sensitive information such as a bank account number) to
complete the transaction. The user can thus complete a
sensitive purchase transaction over the Internet without fear
of sensitive information being misappropriated by an
unscrupulous eavesdropper.
U.S. patent application serial no. 09/023,918, which
is also incorporated by reference herein, discloses an
alternative mode of embedding vendor computer location
information into the target bar code. As taught therein, the
IP address itself (in well known "aa.bb.cc.dd" format) may be
encoded within the bar code so as to avoid the need to utilize
the domain name system for looking up the IP address from the
mnemonic (such as www.acme.com). In this case, the target
file ID or pointer may also be encoded within the bar code so
as to enable the user to download the proper resource (file)
from the vendor server computer located at the encoded IP
address. The use of this type of encoding also allows the use
of a smaller bar code, such as a linear or one-dimensional bar
code. The use of a linear bar code enables a simpler type of
bar code scanner to be utilized by the consumer than in the
previous case of the two-dimensional bar code.
In another alternative, a pointer or resource code
may be encoded, that can be used by the user's computer to
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resolve (i.e. look-up) the URL at a local or remote database
configured to provide such information. Thus, the word "acme"
may be encoded in the bar code, and the user's computer could
perform a look-up (remotely or locally) to obtain the URL or
IP address associated with that identifier. The use of a
shorthand identifier is particularly useful when trying to
pack the data fields into a small symbol such as a linear bar
code. In particular, published international patent
application No. PCT/US97/10689 (WORLD WIDE WEB BAR CODE ACCESS
SYSTEM), which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses
such a system that implements the use of a resource link code
embedded in a bar code, that can be scanned and used to fetch
an associated URL from an external or internal database of
URLs.
Alternatively, use may be made of existing bar codes
such as UPCs (Uniform Product Codes), that already exist on
products as well as printed coupons. The UPC may be scanned,
and an external look-up table or database may be accessed to
determine the URL or IP address of the target vendor computer
on the Internet. The URL is returned by the database to the
user's computer, and is then used in the normal course of
operation to access the appropriate computer. In addition,
the two constituent portions of the UPC (the manufacturer code
and the item code) may be used in the same fashion. That is,
the user's computer may strip the manufacturer's code from the
scanned UPC, and send it to the external database computer to
look-up the appropriate URL for that coupon. The URL is
returned to the user's computer, where it is then combined
with the item code portion of the decoded UPC to generate a
URL or http request accordingly. This is then sent to the
appropriate vendor's computer and the online rransaction may
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proceed accordingly. For this embodiment, reference is made to
published PCT patent application No. PCT/US96/10592 (SYSTEM
FOR USING ARTICLE OF COMMERCE TO ACCESS REMOTE COMPUTER),
which is incorporated by reference herein. In this
embodiment, it is envisioned that the user can purchase a
product such as a music CD, scan the UPC already on the CD,
and be provided with a Web page that allows him to purchase
another (maybe related) CD at a discount, if he consummates
the purchase online. Thus, the incentive provided by the
instant invention is realized by simply scanning the product
itself rather than a separate coupon.
In yet another embodiment, the entry of a keyword or
alias onto a keyboard may be used to effect a discount for an
online purchase, without the need to actually scan a coupon or
product. That is, an alias or nickname is entered into the
user's computer, and is used to look-up the URL or IP address
as mentioned above. Thus, the entry of a predetermined alias
such as "CD Discount" would return the URL of a special Web
page that offers to the consumer the purchase of a CD at a
discount online. The particular discount can be modified on a
page by page basis, that would be accessed with different
keywords or different look-up maps at different times. By
using this embodiment, a vendor could print an ad that
instructs the user to type in the alias on a certain day only,
and that he will be provided with a discount on that day only
for the online purchase. The instant invention is thus
realized without the need to have a scanner at the user's
computer; typing in the appropriate keyword suffices to
provide the instant discount for the online transaction. For
this reference is made to U.S. Patent No. 5,7604,906, which is
incorporated by reference herein.
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2. Incentive and/or product resource identifier - An
identifier that designates the file location on the vendor's
host computer that will provide the product and/or incentive
(discount) information to the user. This may be encoded as
part of the URL (http://www.company.com/couponpromo.html)
above, or it may be a separate field. The resource identifier
is optional, since the default resource location (e. g.
index.html) that the Web browser uses when one is not
specified may be used by the vendor to carry the purchase
information.
3. Discount identifier - The vendor may include a
discount amount (percentage or absolute amount) in the bar
code. This is useful in the situation where different
discounts will be targeted to different groups of consumers,
such as when current customers are given discounts of 10% but
new potential customers are given discounts of 20%. The
intelligence to apply different discounts may also reside at
the server, which could take demographic information and use
it to determine the discount.
4. Consumer identifier - The bar code may include data
that is specific to a targeted consumer or group of consumers.
Thus, for example, bar codes may be printed utilizing a
database of specific consumers, so that John Smith's targeted
coupon has encoded therein an identifier to inform the
vendor's server that John Smith has utilized the coupon (this
may be a look-up pointer or the like). This enables the
vendor to track coupon redemption for future targeted
mailings. Note that consumer identification may also be
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uploaded to the vendor by extracting information resident on
the user's computer.
5. Client application launch command - Optionally, the
bar code could be encoded with a command to automatically
launch a client application such as a web browser, so that the
online purchase process is automated to a greater extent.
Thus, for example, in a WINDOWS environment, the user would
simply scan the coupon's bar code while in any application (or
just at the Windows Desktop), and the Web browser application
launch command would be decoded and cause the Web browser
resident on the user's computer to execute (and if necessary
dial-up the Internet Service Provider preprogrammed by the
user). If this option is omitted, then the user would have to
invoke his Web browser in the usual fashion.
The information described above is input into a bar
code generation program 6 suitable for encoding the input
fields into a print stream suitable for printing the desired
bar code symbol. This process is well known in the art and
need not be described in detail. In addition, optional
parameters related to the specific symbology utilized by the
invention may be selected at this stage. For example, the
PDF417 symbology provides a redundancy-type security feature
that protects against non-decodes of partially damaged
symbols. This feature could be utilized by the entity
printing the bar codes to promote a robust utilization of the
couponing system of this invention.
In addition to the bar code print data stream that
is generated, a print stream is also generated by document
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rendering process 8 that will provide the rendering of the
remainder of the printed coupon; i.e. the human-readable
portion. This is also a process that is well known in the
art, and need not be described in detail here. For example,
the coupon would likely include a graphic representation of
the discounted product, a textual invitation to scan the
coupon for an online purchase, an indication of the discount
amount, etc.
The bar code print stream and the coupon rendering
print steam are then input to a print server 10 and/or printer
12 as well known in the art, which will produce the desired
online coupon 2 of the present invention. The coupons are
disseminated to the public in general, or to a specifically
targeted group of users, in any way desired. Thus, the
coupons may be included in a direct mail program, included as
inserts in the newspapers or magazines, etc. The coupon may
also be printed as part of an advertisement or brochure,
magazine, instruction manual included with a product (e.g. a
purchaser of a video game software package could receive a
coupon for an online purchase of a joystick), etc.
Once the user has received the online coupon and
wishes to make a purchase with it, he must scan the coupon
with a bar code scanner means coupled to his computer. This
could be by the use of a dedicated bar code scanner such as a
laser scanning device (such as one of a variety of devices
marketed by Symbol Technologies, Inc.) or an equivalent CCD
scanning device. In the preferred embodiment, a general-
purpose document page scanner 14 (such as any of a variety of
such device marketed by Hewlett-Packard) may be used by the
present invention. The scanning device provides an electrical
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signal that is proportional to the bars and spaces of the
scanned bar code symbol, and a decoder program running on the
computer 16 (or embedded in the dedicated scanner) examines
the patterns of bars and spaces to arrive at the original data
encoded by vendor at the coupon generation stage described
above. The scanning and decoding processes are well known in
the art and need not be described in detail here.
The actions taken next depend on the data that has
been decoded from the bar code symbol. If the Web browser
launch command has been included, then the user's Web browser
is invoked, or else the user must manually invoke the browser
by a point-and-click action well known in the art. Once the
user's computer is connected to the Internet, the IP address
decoded from the bar code symbol is used to access the
vendor's server computer. Of course, if only a URL had been
included, then the browser must first invoke the Domain Name
Resolution process as well known in the art in order to obtain
the correct IP address of the vendor. Similarly, if only a
pointer or resource code had been encoded, that is then used
by the user's computer to resolve (i.e. look-up) the URL at a
local or remote database configured to provide such
inf ormat ion .
Once the vendor's host server computer has been
accessed, the resource associated with the coupon is
downloaded to the user's browser in a manner well known in the
art. The user can view the information regarding the item or
items available for purchase, as well as the pricing and
discount or other information, and make his purchase choice
based on this data. If the user decides to purchase the item,
he will be provided with the discount and make payment in one
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of any number of Internet payment systems, or by any
conventional such as C.O.D., telephone call with a credit card
number, etc. All that is required is that the user is
provided with a discount on the purchase price due to his use
of the online coupon.
The discount amount may be obtained directly from a
data packet transmitted with the user's HTTP request to access
the vendor's file. That is, the discount amount may be
obtained directly from the coupon, which is useful when the
vendor desires to provide different discount amounts to
differently targeted users. If all discounts are to be the
same, then that intelligence may be kept on the vendor's
sever. In this case, the vendor would be provided with some
type of identifier from the scanned coupon that indicates the
discount should be applied. In the alternative, the resource
obtained by the user by scanning the coupon may be available
only through a password embedded in the coupon, such that only
targeted users will be able to access that Web page. Many
ways of providing a discount amount are thus envisioned by the
present invention.
Of particular value to the vendor in the present
invention is the collection of demographic data regarding
coupon redemption and usage. Thus, it is desired that
information regarding the identity of the user be provided to
the vendor's server during the transaction. As explained
above, some or all of the demographic information (e. g. name,
age, sex, address, hobbies, occupation, income level, etc.)
could be included with the data encoded into the bar code, if
such information is available to the vendor beforehand. In
this case, the vendor might have a database of potential
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users, each of whom would be targeted with the online coupons.
The vendor could then make intelligent decisions regarding
future coupon targeting, since it will know (1) who was sent
the coupons, (2) who accessed the purchase offer online, and
(3) who actually made the purchase. In the alternative to
including the demographics in the bar code, a consumer ID may
be included, which can be linked by the vendor in its database
to obtain the above redemption information.
If non-targeted mailings are implemented (i.e. where
everyone is provided with the same bar code coupon), then the
vendor will likely want to obtain some demographic information
from the user upon consummation of the online purchase. Thus,
the vendor would require a form to be filled out by the user,
which would be sent to the vendor for inclusion in its
database and use in later mailings.
A detailed example will help explain the present
invention. The Acme Software Company runs a Web site at
http://www.acmesoft.com, and in particular provides a special
offer to registered users of its Spreadsheet software that
would allow it to obtain its DataBase software by an online
purchase at a discounted price. If the user had indicated in
its Spreadsheet registration form that it uses a competitive
brand of database software, then it applies a $20 discount,
and if the user had indicated in its Spreadsheet registration
form that it never used any type of database software, then it
applies only a $10 discount. Acme prints a coupon for mailing
to these registered Spreadsheet users that will receive the
$20 discount that includes the following fields:
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IP ADDRESS RESOURCE ID DISCOUNT CONSUMER ID
http://www.acmesoft.com /databaseoffer.html 20 12345
John Smith, a registered user with Acme consumer ID
number 12345, receives this coupon in the mail and is enticed
into purchasing the DataBase software package by reading the
accompanying text offer. He passes the coupon under his page
scanner attached to his computer, and a bar code decoding
program is automatically invoked. He then dials-up his
Internet Service Provider (this example does not include the
launch command), and the page
"http://www.acmesoft.com/databaseoffer.html" is loaded by his
browser. After reading the enticing offer on the screen, he
clicks on a "purchase" button and provides his credit card
number in an encrypted format. He receives the software at
the normal price minus the discount of $20.
In this process, Acme is provided with his consumer
ID to verify that this consumer should in fact be receiving
the discount. Acme also know has knowledge that Mr. Smith
received the offer, acted on it, and executed it. Acme may
then utilize this data in future coupon campaigns.
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