CA2671268A1 - Ownership-based distribution - Google Patents
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- CA2671268A1 CA2671268A1 CA 2671268 CA2671268A CA2671268A1 CA 2671268 A1 CA2671268 A1 CA 2671268A1 CA 2671268 CA2671268 CA 2671268 CA 2671268 A CA2671268 A CA 2671268A CA 2671268 A1 CA2671268 A1 CA 2671268A1
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Abstract
A method of distribution comprising providing at least one computer readable storage medium for storing authentic ownership data; and for each ownership acquiring transaction causing a member to acquire one or more products, affirming said member's authentic ownership of each of said acquired products into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new; whereby the authentic ownerships being affirmed are equated with said member's corresponding commissioned distributorships.
Description
OWNERSHIP-BASED DISTRIBUTION
1. FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to distribution, and more particularly, ownership-based distribution.
1. FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to distribution, and more particularly, ownership-based distribution.
2. BACKGROUND
Conventionally, ownership rights and distribution rights are two separate matters without inherent connections. The ownership right of a product is the right to own and use the product, the distribution right of a product is the right to distribute the product for earning commissions.
Therefore, purchasing a product only deems the buyer the ownership right of the purchased product, but does not automatically grant the buyer the distribution right of the purchased product; and gifting a product only deems the gift recipient the ownership right of the gifted product, but does not automatically grant the gift recipient the distribution right of the gifted product. Thus far, none of the existing e-commerce systems automatically grants a buyer the distribution right of a purchased product and none of the existing gifting systems automatically grants a gift recipient the distribution right of a gifted product.
In addition, affiliate programs used by various e-commerce systems are popular means for partners to participate in distributions. But existing affiliate programs fall into the category of subscription based distribution in which a partner subscribes a set of products for distribution to earn affiliate fees without requiring product ownerships.
In addition, social recommendation systems allow a member to declare what he/she likes, owns or wishes to own without authentic proofs of what are declared or recommended. A
member may declare the ownership of a product that he/she never owned or recommend a product that he/she never used. Thus the trustworthiness and authenticity of self-declaration and user-generated recommendation systems are questionable and subject to abuse.
In comparison therewith, this invention provides many unique features:
(1) Unlike existing e-commerce systems and gifting systems which do not connect ownerships with distributorships, this invention equates authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships such that the distribution right of a product is automatically acquired upon authentic acquisition of the product ownership via an actual purchasing or gifting activity.
(2) In addition, unlike conventional affiliate distribution programs which do not require ownerships of the products being distributed, this invention introduces a new type of distribution which allows members to distribute authentically owned products for making commissions.
Conventionally, ownership rights and distribution rights are two separate matters without inherent connections. The ownership right of a product is the right to own and use the product, the distribution right of a product is the right to distribute the product for earning commissions.
Therefore, purchasing a product only deems the buyer the ownership right of the purchased product, but does not automatically grant the buyer the distribution right of the purchased product; and gifting a product only deems the gift recipient the ownership right of the gifted product, but does not automatically grant the gift recipient the distribution right of the gifted product. Thus far, none of the existing e-commerce systems automatically grants a buyer the distribution right of a purchased product and none of the existing gifting systems automatically grants a gift recipient the distribution right of a gifted product.
In addition, affiliate programs used by various e-commerce systems are popular means for partners to participate in distributions. But existing affiliate programs fall into the category of subscription based distribution in which a partner subscribes a set of products for distribution to earn affiliate fees without requiring product ownerships.
In addition, social recommendation systems allow a member to declare what he/she likes, owns or wishes to own without authentic proofs of what are declared or recommended. A
member may declare the ownership of a product that he/she never owned or recommend a product that he/she never used. Thus the trustworthiness and authenticity of self-declaration and user-generated recommendation systems are questionable and subject to abuse.
In comparison therewith, this invention provides many unique features:
(1) Unlike existing e-commerce systems and gifting systems which do not connect ownerships with distributorships, this invention equates authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships such that the distribution right of a product is automatically acquired upon authentic acquisition of the product ownership via an actual purchasing or gifting activity.
(2) In addition, unlike conventional affiliate distribution programs which do not require ownerships of the products being distributed, this invention introduces a new type of distribution which allows members to distribute authentically owned products for making commissions.
(3) In addition, unlike known social recommendation systems which rely on user-generated recommendations without proving what are declared or recommended, this invention authenticates ownerships based on actual ownership acquiring purchasing or gifting activities.
The main object of this invention is to provide a computer-implemented method of equating authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships so that authentic ownerships are affirmed for members upon their actual ownership acquiring activities and authentically owned products are distributable by authentic owners for making commissions. Accordingly, several advantages of this invention are:
(a) Authentic ownerships provide authentic owners a moneymaking opportunity for each authentically owned product. Thus passive products being purchased or gifted become active money growing assets.
(b) Authentic ownerships are permanent during production life cycles of associated products.
Thus, a product is acquired once and distributed repeatedly.
(c) Authentic ownerships are transferable, thus can be gifted to anyone including children, relatives or social friends.
(d) Authentic ownerships provide greater trustworthiness and authenticity than user generated wishy-washy recommendations and declarations of what they like, own or wish to own, thus can be used as a more efficient source of customer intelligence.
(e) Authentic ownership based social distribution provides a new and efficient marketing and distribution framework, in which suppliers can reach new buyers either directly or via distributors who are existing customers, thus cutting out all the middlemen and intermediaries.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuring description.
3. LIST OF FIGURES
Fig 1 illustrates the architecture of an ownership-based distribution platform.
Fig 2 illustrates order processing in general.
Fig 3 illustrates ownership-specific order processing.
Fig 4 illustrates ownership-based gifting applications.
Fig 5A and Fig 5B illustrate ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 6 illustrates ownership-based user actions in store presentations.
Fig 7 illustrates the interactive media for carrying ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 8 illustrates the rendering of ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 9 illustrates ownership-based store configurations.
Fig 10 illustrates a user console for accessing ownership-based distribution services.
Fig 11 illustrates the applications of historical ownership acquiring activity data.
The main object of this invention is to provide a computer-implemented method of equating authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships so that authentic ownerships are affirmed for members upon their actual ownership acquiring activities and authentically owned products are distributable by authentic owners for making commissions. Accordingly, several advantages of this invention are:
(a) Authentic ownerships provide authentic owners a moneymaking opportunity for each authentically owned product. Thus passive products being purchased or gifted become active money growing assets.
(b) Authentic ownerships are permanent during production life cycles of associated products.
Thus, a product is acquired once and distributed repeatedly.
(c) Authentic ownerships are transferable, thus can be gifted to anyone including children, relatives or social friends.
(d) Authentic ownerships provide greater trustworthiness and authenticity than user generated wishy-washy recommendations and declarations of what they like, own or wish to own, thus can be used as a more efficient source of customer intelligence.
(e) Authentic ownership based social distribution provides a new and efficient marketing and distribution framework, in which suppliers can reach new buyers either directly or via distributors who are existing customers, thus cutting out all the middlemen and intermediaries.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuring description.
3. LIST OF FIGURES
Fig 1 illustrates the architecture of an ownership-based distribution platform.
Fig 2 illustrates order processing in general.
Fig 3 illustrates ownership-specific order processing.
Fig 4 illustrates ownership-based gifting applications.
Fig 5A and Fig 5B illustrate ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 6 illustrates ownership-based user actions in store presentations.
Fig 7 illustrates the interactive media for carrying ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 8 illustrates the rendering of ownership-based store presentations.
Fig 9 illustrates ownership-based store configurations.
Fig 10 illustrates a user console for accessing ownership-based distribution services.
Fig 11 illustrates the applications of historical ownership acquiring activity data.
4. SUMMARY
This invention describes computer-implemented methods of equating authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships so that authentic ownerships are affirmed for members upon their actual ownership acquiring activities and authentically owned products are automatically distributable by authentic owners for making commissions.
The ownership acquiring activities leading to authentic ownership affirmations comprise purchasing activities and gifting activities, wherein the products being purchased or gifted are managed products registered with the distribution platform by their suppliers. When a member makes a purchase of a product, the member is affirmed the authentic ownership of the purchased product, thus automatically becomes a commissioned distributor of the purchased product. When a member receives a product as a gift, the member is affirmed the authentic ownership of the gifted product, thus automatically becomes a commissioned distributor of the gifted product.
When a member distributes an authentically owned product, the member is paid a commission for the distribution.
In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method of using authentic ownerships as distributorships is disclosed, in which members' authentic ownerships are affirmed upon their ownership acquiring purchasing or gifting activities so that members can distribute authentically owned products for making commissions in a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of stores.
In another embodiment, a computer-implemented distribution method is disclosed, in which all the direct participants in a purchasing order are compensated. The direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased; the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased, wherein the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased, the supplier is compensated with a profit payment, and the distributor is compensated with a commission payment.
In yet another embodiment, a distribution platform is disclosed. The platform comprises a distribution server and a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributable stores which are portable to remote interactive media contents for users to carry out ownership-based distribution transactions across communication networks.
In yet another embodiment, a carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of ownership acquiring activity data for use by an application program is disclosed. Said ownership acquiring activity data are collected by an ownership-based distribution system which allows members to distribute authentically owned products for making commissions.
These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with reference to the following description and claims.
This invention describes computer-implemented methods of equating authentic ownerships with commissioned distributorships so that authentic ownerships are affirmed for members upon their actual ownership acquiring activities and authentically owned products are automatically distributable by authentic owners for making commissions.
The ownership acquiring activities leading to authentic ownership affirmations comprise purchasing activities and gifting activities, wherein the products being purchased or gifted are managed products registered with the distribution platform by their suppliers. When a member makes a purchase of a product, the member is affirmed the authentic ownership of the purchased product, thus automatically becomes a commissioned distributor of the purchased product. When a member receives a product as a gift, the member is affirmed the authentic ownership of the gifted product, thus automatically becomes a commissioned distributor of the gifted product.
When a member distributes an authentically owned product, the member is paid a commission for the distribution.
In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method of using authentic ownerships as distributorships is disclosed, in which members' authentic ownerships are affirmed upon their ownership acquiring purchasing or gifting activities so that members can distribute authentically owned products for making commissions in a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of stores.
In another embodiment, a computer-implemented distribution method is disclosed, in which all the direct participants in a purchasing order are compensated. The direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased; the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased, wherein the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased, the supplier is compensated with a profit payment, and the distributor is compensated with a commission payment.
In yet another embodiment, a distribution platform is disclosed. The platform comprises a distribution server and a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributable stores which are portable to remote interactive media contents for users to carry out ownership-based distribution transactions across communication networks.
In yet another embodiment, a carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of ownership acquiring activity data for use by an application program is disclosed. Said ownership acquiring activity data are collected by an ownership-based distribution system which allows members to distribute authentically owned products for making commissions.
These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with reference to the following description and claims.
5. DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS
This invention is about the use of authentic ownerships as commissioned distributorships and its application in social distribution participated by a plurality of managed members for distributing a plurality of managed products in a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of stores.
Authentic ownerships are the ownerships being authenticated upon actual ownership acquiring purchasing or gifting activities. Managed members are the members registered with the distribution marketplace. Managed products are the products enrolled with the distribution marketplace by their suppliers. A managed member can enroll products for other members to distribute or distribute authentically owned products enrolled by other members or direct-sale self-enrolled products. A
managed member may be a business member or an individual member.
Fig 1 illustrates how authentic ownerships are acquired, stored and equated with commissioned distributorships to enable ownership-based distribution in a distribution platform operated in the environment comprising a plurality of managed members to participate in distribution, a plurality of managed products to be distributed by the managed members and a plurality of stores to carry out distribution transactions.
The distribution platform comprises distribution server 100 and distribution marketplace 170. The distribution server 100 is responsible for providing ownership based distribution services and related data managements. The distribution server 100 comprises data modules (account module 110, product module 120, ownership module 130, activity module 140), API 150 and server control 160.
The account module 110 provides storage, registration, update and retrieval of managed member account data. The product module 120 provides storage, enrollment, update and retrieval of managed product data. The ownership module 130 provides storage, affirmation and retrieval of authentic ownership data. The activity module 140 provides storage and retrieval of historical ownership acquiring activity data. The API 150 comprises functions for store configurations 151, and functions for processing ownership acquiring activity transactions 152.
The server control 160 is responsible for receiving service requests from stores distributed across communication networks and directing the processing of the requests to related server processing components and returning responses to the stores that initiating the service requests. The marketplace 170 comprises store presentations for carrying out ownership acquiring activities, such as purchasing via a user action 173 in a store 172 or gifting via a user action 175 in a store 174. The applications 180, such as a purchasing application 181 or a gifting application 182, may be integrated with the distribution platform using the function interfaces of data modules (110, 120, 130 and 140) and the API 150.
Server side of the processing components, including storages and interfaces of data modules, implementations of API 150 and server control 160, may reside on the same server machine or scattered into a computing cloud.
The account module 110 comprises account database 111 for storing a plurality of managed member account records in one or more computer readable storage media and a function interface 112 for creating, accessing and managing the stored account records. A member's account record comprises the member's unique user identifier uid which is automatically generated by the platform at the time of account registry, the account balance which is a numerical representation of the member's payment account, and user provided data which further comprise (1) user contact data; (2) payment method setup for indicating how to transfer money in the payment account to the member's chosen destination, wherein the payment method is either one of online payment services such as PayPal or conventional check mailing; (3) default commission setup for self-enrolled products, which is either a percentage of product pricing or a fixed value. The account module interface 112 comprises: (a) account registry function for registering a member account based on user supplied data. The function generates a uid for the member account and creates an account record in the account database 111 with the account balance initialized to zero prior to any payment transactions; (b) account data update function for a member to update user provided data in his/her account; (c) payment processing function for making a payment of a given amount to the account of a given member identified by a uid.
Each member has a public user profile containing the member's public data such as the access to the member's social friends maintained by the platform or by one or more third party social networks that are integrated with the platform. Each member's public user profile also comprises the access to the member's primary store in public mode and user console in private mode. A
member can locate a friend's primary store by navigating to the friend's public user profile.
Every user who wants to participate in the ownership-based distribution must be a managed member. A user can become a managed member by registering a member account.
Any user, either a managed member or an un-managed user, can make a purchase of any product in any store in the distribution marketplace. Only the buyer who is a managed member is affirmed the authentic ownership of a purchased product to automatically become the distributor of the product being purchased, and only a managed member can participate in commissioned distribution or enroll products for ownership-based distribution. A managed member has the right to any of the following:
(a) acquiring the authentic ownership of a product upon purchasing the product or receiving the product as a gift, and distributing the authentically owned product in the member's one or more stores for making commissions; (b) enrolling products for distribution and making supplier's profits from distributions via distributors or from direct-sales in the member's own stores. A managed member may be a business member or an individual member. The methods and systems described in this invention are generic to all managed members without the need to distinguish business members and individual members. Depending on members' personal preferences, some members may exercise the right (a) only; some members may exercise the right (b) only; and some members may exercise both the right (a) and the right (b).
The product module 120 comprises the product database 121 for storing products data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the product module interface 122 which further comprises the functions for creating, storing and managing the product data in the product database 121. The product database 121 stores a plurality of product records, each product record comprises a unique product identifier pid, a supplier's uid, product title, description, price, commission setup, available quantity, delivery type, listing image file, and one or more content files in case of a digital product. A commission setup may be given as a percentage of the product price or a fixed value.
Each product enrolled with the platform is ready for distribution by managed members when its available quantity remains. The available quantity of a digital product is unlimited. The available quantity of a tangible product is provided by the product supplier and dynamically tracked and updated by the platform upon each purchasing activity. When the quantity of a tangible product is sold out, the product will be automatically de-activated in all distribution stores and its distributors cannot distribute the product till a new quantity is supplied by its supplier.
The product module interface 122 comprises: (a) product registry function for enrolling a product which creates the product data record in the product database 121 based on the product data provided by its supplier;
(b) product retrieval function for retrieving detailed product data of a given product identified by a pid; (c) product update function for updating the product data of a given product; (d) product activation/de-activation function for activating or de-activating the listing of a given product.
By enrolling a product with the platform, the product becomes a managed product to be distributed or gifted by managed members. Only a managed product being distributed or gifted is eligible for ownership-based compensation. A managed product may be a digital product or a tangible product.
A raw digital product is delivered digitally via either downloading or online rendering carried out by the platform or by a partner site. A tangible product or a packaged digital product is delivered physically via either shipment or pickup arranged by its supplier. Example categories of digital products include e-books, electronic documents, audio, video, photos, graphics, movies, music, software, digital games, e-cards, interactive media content products and virtual goods.
The ownership module 130 comprises the ownership database 131 for storing authentic ownership data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the ownership module interface 132 which further comprises functions for creating, storing and retrieving authentic ownership data. The ownership database 131 comprises the storage of a plurality of ownership records, each ownership record comprises a unique user identifier (uid) and a unique product identifier (pid) representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product. The ownership module interface 132 comprises: (a) ownership query functions 133 for accessing ownership data stored in the ownership database 131, and (b) ownership affirmation function 134 for creating and storing ownerships into the ownership database 131. The following are some of the functions in the ownership module interface 132:
(1) Query] (uid) - This function takes uid as input parameter and returns a list of pids of all the products that the member associated with the given uid authentically owns.
(2) Query2(uid) - This function takes uid as input parameter and returns a list of authentic ownerships that the member associated with the given uid has.
(3) Query3(uid, pid) - This function takes uid and pid as input parameters and validates the existence of the ownership between the member associated with the given uid and the product associated with the given pid.
(4) Affirm(uid, pid) - This function takes uid and pid as input parameters and affirms an ownership relationship between a member identified by the given uid and a product identified by the given pid into the ownership database if the ownership is not already existent in the ownership database.
The activity module 140 is responsible for storing and accessing historical records of ownership acquiring activities. The activity module comprises the activity database 141 for storing ownership acquiring activity historical data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the activity module interface 142 for recording activity data into the activity database and accessing activity data from the activity database. The activity database contains the storage of a plurality of ownership-acquiring activity records. Each ownership acquiring activity is either a purchasing activity or a gifting activity. Each activity record comprises the uid of a product acquirer, the pid of a product being acquired in the activity, the timestamp of the activity, the type of the activity such as purchasing or gifting, the quantity of the product acquisition, the price of the acquired product, an the gift giver's uid in the case of a gifting activity.
The API 150 comprises store configuration functions 151 and ownership acquiring activity transaction processing functions 152. The store configuration functions 151 are used for the setup and configuration of a store's content and structure on what products are included in the store and how the products in the store are presented in interactive media. The transaction processing 152 processes each purchasing or gifting transaction.
The server control 160 is responsible for receiving service requests from store presentations and user consoles and directing the processing of the requests to related service components and returning the responses back to the respective store presentations and user consoles originating the service requests.
Purchasing activities are carried out in the distribution marketplace 170 which comprises a plurality of store presentations 171 including member store presentations and central store presentation. Each store presentation 172 comprises the listing information about one or more products and the user action means 173 for buyers to initiate purchasing transactions in that store.
When a purchasing means 173 in a store 172 is initiated by a buyer, the store presentation sends a purchasing transaction request to the distribution server 100, then the distribution server control 160 receives the request and directs the processing of the request to the transaction processing 152.
A member may have one or more store presentations in the marketplace 170. Each of a member's one or more store presentations comprises: (1) the products that the member authentically owned for commissioned distribution; or (2) the products that the member enrolled for distribution; or (3) the combination of (1) and (2).
A gifting activity may be initiated from a store 174 via a user action means 175 or from a gifting application 182 which is integrated with the distribution platform. Each gifting transaction request is transmitted to the distribution server 100 and is received by the server control 160 and directed to transaction processing 152 for further processing.
The data modules 110, 120, 130, 140 and the API 150 may be accessed locally or remotely by the distribution platform and applications. The remote access may be implemented using one or more of the communication protocols comprising TCP/IP, RPC, and HTTP.
The transaction processing 152 processes each transaction request received from a store presentation (172, 174) or an application (181, 182). Each ownership acquiring activity transaction comprises one or more ownership acquiring orders. For example, a purchasing transaction initiated by a single purchasing action means contains one purchasing order, a purchasing transaction initiated by a multi-purchasing action means such as a shopping cart checkout operation contains one or more purchasing orders. Each ownership acquiring order in an ownership acquiring transaction is processed by the order processing illustrated in Fig 2, wherein the order processing comprises the steps of.
(a) Payment processing (201) - The payment processing verifies the buyer's payment amount and accepts the payment for the ordered quantity of a product. This step is for a purchasing or a gifting order which involves purchasing payment. This step is skipped for a gifting order which does not involve purchasing payment.
(b) Delivery processing (202) - The delivery processing is responsible for delivering a purchased product to its buyer or a gifted product to its recipient via either digital-delivery or physical-delivery depending on the delivery type of the product specified by its supplier.
Digital-delivery comprises downloading and online rendering which may be carried out using one or more of the protocols comprising HTTP, FTP and TCP/IP.
Downloading delivery type delivers a digital product by file transferring. Online rendering delivery type transmits a digital product for real-time consumption, such as listening to a music, reading a book, viewing a photo image, playing a video, etc. Physical-delivery comprises shipment and pickup, in which shipment delivery type ships a product to buyer or a gift recipient's postal address by the product supplier, and pickup delivery type allows a member to pickup an acquired product from one of the supplier's sites.
(c) Ownership-specific purchasing order processing (203) - This step is responsible for ownership specific purchasing order processing, such as ownership based compensation.
This step is further illustrated in Fig 3.
(d) Ownership-specific gifting order processing (204) - This step is responsible for ownership specific gifting order processing, in which a gift recipient is affirmed the authentic ownership of a gifted product. This step is further illustrated in Fig 4.
(e) Activity event processing (205) - This step records the ownership acquiring activity in the activity database 141.
An existing e-commerce application which already has payment processing and delivery processing may integrate with the ownership-specific purchasing processing step 203 and/or ownership-based gifting order processing 204.
Fig 3 illustrates the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (203) which processes each purchasing order in the following steps:
(a) Owner's Distributorship Processing (301) - This step enrolls the owner of the product being purchased in said purchasing order as a distributor of the product by affirming said owner's authentic ownership of the product being purchased into the ownership database 131. In a normal purchasing order, the owner is the buyer; in a gift purchasing order, the owner is the gift recipient; and in a sponsored purchasing order, the owner is the buyer being sponsored.
A non-member owner may be asked to register for a membership in order to obtain the authentic ownership affirmation.
(b) Distributor's Commission Processing (302) - This step makes a commission payment to the actual seller associated with the order if the actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a member's store is the owner of the store where the purchasing order is initiated. The actual seller of a direct-sale purchasing order initiated directly from a store of the supplier of the product being purchased is the supplier. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a central store is the supplier of the product being purchased. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a re-directed commerce presentation is the owner of the topmost store presentation originating the chain of redirections if the topmost store is a member store, otherwise the actual seller is the supplier of the product being purchased. If the actual seller has authentic ownership of the product being purchased, this step determines the amount of commission for the product based on the product commission setup retrieved from the product database 121 via product module interface 122. When the product specific commission setup is not given, the default commission setup is retrieved from the supplier's account stored in the account database 111 via account module interface 112.
The commission being calculated is then paid in full to the actual seller without sharing with anyone else. The commission is credited to the actual seller's payment account stored in the account database 111 via payment processing function in the account module interface 112.
(c) Supplier's Profit Processing (303) - This step makes a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased. It determines the supplier of the product being purchased and calculates the supplier's profit for the purchasing order and pays the resulting profit to the supplier's payment account stored in the account database 111 via payment processing function in the account module interface 112. The supplier's profit is calculated by deducting the order's transactional costs from the purchasing price of the product being purchased. The transactional costs of an order comprise a commission to be paid to the actual seller if the actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased.
Beside the commission cost, the transactional costs may also comprise a transaction fee charged by the service provider. The transaction fee may be a percentage of the product price or a fixed value. The transaction fee may be zero if the service is free.
When a product being purchased in a member's store is the product enrolled by the store owner, the purchasing order is a direct-sale. When a product being purchased in a member's store is the product that the store owner has authentic ownership, the purchasing order is a distribution via a distributor.
In a direct-sale, the direct participants are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, for which the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased and the supplier is paid a profit without incurring commission cost. In a distribution, the direct participants are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased, for which the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased, the distributor is paid a commission and the supplier is paid a profit.
Ownership propagations of a product are originally seeded by direct sales and are populated by subsequent distributions. The ownership-based compensation (301, 302, 303) deals with only the direct participants, cutting out all the middlemen, thus enabling a simple and efficient distribution framework.
Ownership-based gifting grants gift recipients' the authentic ownerships of the managed products being gifted. Unlike conventional gift-giving practices and applications in which the gifted products are inactive objects, the ownership-based gifting turns gifted products into active money making opportunities for gift recipients. As illustrated in Fig 4, different gift-giving operations may require different treatment, but all share the common step in processing, that is to affirm a gift recipient's authentic ownership of a gifted product so that the gift recipient automatically becomes an authorized commissioned distributor of the gifted product. The ownership affirmation is accomplished by using the affirmation function 134 in the ownership module 130.
(a) Gift purchasing (401) - A gift purchasing operation allows a first member to make a purchase of a product for a second member, in which the first member makes the payment for the product and the second member receives the delivery of the product. A
gift purchasing operation is processed by the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (Fig 3) in which the gift recipient is affirmed the authentic ownership of the gifted product.
(b) Sponsored Purchasing (402) - A sponsored purchasing operation allows a member to make a purchase of a product paid by a pre-authorized sponsor. For example a child may make a purchase of a book via parent sponsored payment arrangement. A sponsored purchasing operation is processed by the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (Fig 3) in which the sponsor is the gift giver and the buyer who is sponsored is considered the gift-recipient of the purchased product and is affirmed the authentic ownership of the purchased product being paid by the sponsor.
(c) Gift Giveaway (403) - A gift-giveaway operation does not involve purchasing. It is the operation for a supplier to gift a product to a member. A gift-giveaway operation is processed by the ownership affirmation step 134 to affirm the gift recipient's authentic ownership of the gifted product.
(d) Ownership Transferring (404) - A product authentic ownership may be transferred to a new owner by its existing owner. An ownership transferring operation is processed by affirming the new owner's authentic ownership of the related product in step 134 and canceling the ownership of the existing owner. The above step of affirming a new ownership and canceling the old ownership may be simplified into one step of changing the existing owner's uid in the ownership of the transferred product to the uid of the new owner.
(e) Gift rewarding (405) - A gift rewarding operation is a means for a supplier to reward its own products to members who made contributions to the supplier with gifted products. The type of contributions can be any acts of favor to a supplier which are identifiable and traceable by the supplier, such as filling in an online survey, making a suggestion, reporting a problem, providing help, providing service, etc. A member who receives a rewarded product in a gift rewarding operation is affirmed the authentic ownership of the rewarded product in step 134.
A gifted product may be delivered digitally or physically depending on the type of delivery of the product being specified by its supplier. In the case of a physical delivery, the gift giver is responsible for arranging the shipment or pickup.
In this ownership-based distribution platform, the use of authentic ownerships for distributorships involves the following:
(1) The ownership module provides computer readable storage media for storing authentic ownerships data so that authentic ownerships are tracked and stored for use by the distribution platform and the associated applications.
(2) The authentic ownerships stored in said ownership data storage are automatically equated with the corresponding distributorships, so that each member can include in that member's one or more store presentations the products that the member has authentic ownerships stored in said ownerships data storage for commissioned distributions. By doing so, each member is automatically a commissioned distributor of all the products that the member authentically owns.
(3) The order processing affirms the buyer's ownership of a purchased product for each purchasing order in a transaction triggered by a user action means in a store presentation.
The new ownership is created and stored in said ownerships data storage if the ownership is not already existent.
(4) The order processing compensates the actual seller in each purchasing order in a purchasing transaction with a commission payment if the actual seller is a distributor of the product being purchased, that is the actual seller has the authentic owner of the product being purchased.
Purchasing transactions are carried out in the distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of store presentations. Each store presentation is a user actionable commerce presentation which comprises descriptions of one or more products and a user action means for a user to initiate ownership acquiring transactions from said store. A product description may be factual or promotional. Each store presentation is a distributable store interacting with the distribution server across communication networks. A user's action request in a store presentation is sent to the distribution server and the distribution server processes the request and then returns the response back to the store.
Each member has one or more store presentations, one of them is selected by the member as the primary store which is accessible from the member's public user profile and allows the member to access in private console mode to other platform services such as updating account data, enrolling products, and viewing earnings, etc.
Fig 5A illustrates a store presentation which comprises one or more product presentation units displayed in a display area 501, each product presentation unit comprises product descriptive content 502 and a user action means 503 for a user to initiate an ownership-acquiring action against the presented product 502. The product presentation units in a store presentation may further be organized into a navigational hierarchy using navigational categories 504 in which when a category is selected, the product presentation units associated with that category are shown in the display area 501.
Fig 5B illustrates a store presentation in the form of promotion which comprises a product promotional unit in the display area 505. The promotional unit further comprises promotional content for a product 506 and a user action means 507 for a user to initiate an ownership acquiring action against the promoted product. Navigational categories 508 may be used to organize multiple promotional units, in which when a category is selected, the promotional unit associated with the selected category is shown in the display area 505.
A user action means may be a single product purchasing means, a multi-product purchasing means or a redirection means which redirects the user to another commerce presentation. A user action request initiated from a store presentation is sent to the distribution server for processing.
Fig 6 illustrates example types of user action means which can be initiated from a store presentation.
(a) direct single purchasing action such as a "Buy" button 601 - The single purchasing action means carries the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product being purchased in the single purchasing transaction request and sends the request to the distribution server for purchasing transaction processing which in turn invokes the ownership-specific order processing illustrated in Fig 3.
(b) direct multi-purchasing shopping cart operation - such as "Add to Cart"
button 602 for adding a product order to a shopping cart and "Checkout" button 603 for sending the multi-product purchasing transaction request to the distribution server. Each time when a product order is added to a shopping cart, the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product are included and when the shopping cart checkout action is activated, a multi-product purchasing transaction request encapsulating one or more product orders is sent to the distribution server for processing. The distribution server processes a multi-product purchasing transaction by repeatedly invoking the ownership-specific order processing illustrated in Fig 3 for each purchasing order in the purchasing transaction.
(c) redirection means to redirect a user to another commerce presentation -For example "More..." button 604 is a redirection means for opening up another store presentation 605 which contains the detailed product description 606 of the associated product and a user action means 607 for acting upon the presented product, wherein the user action means 607 may be a direct action means, for example a direct single product purchasing means 601, or a direct multi-product purchasing means 602, 603. The redirection may carry one or more levels down, in which the actual seller is the owner of the top most store presentation originating the chain of redirections. The identity of the actual seller is passed down from the top originating store presentation containing the redirection action means to the level where the direct ownership acquiring action is initiated.
Fig 7 illustrates the example types of interactive digital media for carrying the store presentations.
(a) Internet contents & applications (701) - This category comprises Internet web pages, blogs, and Internet applications. For example, a member may include the access of a store presentation in his/her web site, blog or personal profile of a third party social network application.
(b) Messaging contents and applications (702) - This category comprises communication and messaging contents and applications, such as micro-blogging, email, instant messaging, etc.
For example, a member may include the access to a store presentation in a micro-blogging message, an email, or an instant message, etc.
(c) Mobile contents and applications (703) - This category comprises the contents and applications for mobile communication devices, such as laptop, netbook, smart phone, smartbook, pocket PC, Internet Tablet, etc. A store presentation may be displayed on the screen of a mobile device for a user to browse and to make purchases.
(d) Interactive TV contents (704) - Store presentations may be inserted in interactive TV
contents for viewers to view and act upon.
(e) Interactive game contents and applications (705) - Access to store presentations may be inserted into interactive gaming contents or applications for users to view and act upon.
(f) Interactive software contents and applications (706) - Access to store presentations may be inserted into interactive software contents and applications for users to view and act upon.
Fig 8 illustrates different methods of store presentation rendering in carrying media.
(a) Hosted by server (801) - A store presentation object may be hosted by the distribution server and referenced in a carrying media, and rendered in the carrying media when the carrying media is rendered. For example, a store presentation object hosted at a server may be referred by the object address or identification such as URL and rendered in the hosting contents such as HTML contents.
(b) Embedded in contents (802) - A store presentation object code may be fully embedded in a carrying media. For example, a store presentation object in HTML compatible format may be dynamically embedded in a carrying html document with DHTML or AJAX
scripting, etc. A store presentation object implemented as a rich media object such as a Flash movie may be embedded in raw binary in a MHTML document or contents in other compiled formats.
(c) Generated on-demand (803) - The actual object code of a store presentation may be dynamically generated on-demand and rendered in a carrying media dynamically.
A
dynamic store may be generated at the server side or at the client side. In the former case, a carrying media sends a customized store generation request to the distribution server, and the distribution server returns the generated store presentation object to the carrying media for rendering. In the latter case, the carrying media generates the dynamic store on the fly and dynamically inserts the generated store in-place.
A rendered store presentation object is a user actionable interactive media object which interacts remotely with the distribution server over communication network connections, including wired connections, wireless connections, Internet or hybrid connections.
Fig 9 illustrates store configuration operations. Each member has a master list 901 which contains the products that said member has rights to distribute or to direct sell. A
member has the rights to distribute any of the products that the member has authentic ownerships or to direct-sell any products that the member self-enrolled. The master list may be scoped by category "All" 902, "Owned" 903 or "Enrolled" 904, wherein category "All" 902 retrieves all the products that the member has authentic ownerships and that the member enrolled; the category "Owned" 903 retrieves all the products that the member has authentic ownerships; the category "Enrolled" 904 retrieves all the products that the member enrolled. Each product in the master list 901 contains the product related information such as PID 906, price 907, commission 908, disclosure policy 909, etc.
The disclosure policy may be configured to define the scope of a product visibility. The disclosure policy may be public, private or protected. A product listing with public disclosure is visible by any users. A product listing with private disclosure is visible only by the store owner. A product listing with protected disclosure is visible by the store owner and the friends of the store owner. A member can create one or more store presentations by store creation 910 which generates a unique store identifier for each newly created empty stores to be configured to include products from the master list 901. The created one or more stores are listed in the store list 914. One of the stores in the store list 914 may be selected as a primary store which can be accessible from the member's public user profile. Any one of the stores 914 can be selected as the active store 915 for configurations. Products can be included into or excluded from the active store by "automatic"
operation 911, "interactive"
operation 912 or "manual" operation 913. The "automatic" operation includes all the products that the member is eligible to sell or to distribute. The "interactive" operation 912 allows a member to interactively include products selected from the master list 901 into the active store or exclude products from the active store. The manual operation 913 is via manual editing of the store presentation code. The presentation style and theme of a store is automatically formatted by the platform and can be customized. The generated store presentation includes the product listing information and user action means such as buy button or shopping cart operation buttons. The generated primary store is a user console which contains a member's private access to platform services such as updating account data, enroll products, view earnings, etc.
The type of action means, either a single purchasing means or a multi-purchase means, is selected in parameter setup 916. The action means is constructed in the way that when a purchasing action is invoked in a store presentation, the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product are embedded in the purchasing transaction request to be sent to the distribution server upon activation. The code generation operation 917 generates distributable store presentation object or widget for the active store 915 which can be portable to or embeddable in carrying interactive media contents.
The code generation operation may also be used to generate store object code on-demand. A
generated store presentation object is in a user selected format among many standard content and application formats specified in parameter setup 916.
Fig 10 illustrates a member's primary store with private console access to the platform services. The primary store is accessible from the member's public profile, in which the store is public to all users and the console access is private to the store owner. The console access comprises a command area 1000 and a display area 1006. The command area 1000 contains "Store" 1001, "Account" 1002, "Products" 1003, "Store Config" 1004 and "Central" 1005. The "Store" 1001 tab and the "Central"
1005 tab are public to all users. The "Account" 1002 tab, the "Products" 1003 tab and the "Store Config" 1004 tab are private to the store owner. When "Store" 1001 tab is selected, a store listing request is sent to the distribution server and the server returns the member's primary store listing to be displayed in the display area 1006. When "Store Config" 1004 tab is selected, the display area shows the user interface for a member to configure his/her one or more stores, including the primary store showed in the member's public profile and other stores to be distributed to third party interactive content sites. When "Central" 1005 is clicked, the platform central store presentation is shown in a separate window or in the display area 1006 which contains the access to all the products enrolled with the platform by all suppliers. The "Buy" button 1007 is a single purchasing means for initiating the purchasing of the associated product and the "More" button 1008 is a redirection means for displaying detailed product information. When a "Buy" button of a listed product is pressed, a purchasing transaction request containing a single purchasing order is sent to the distribution server for processing, which affirms the buyer's ownership of the purchased product and makes a commission payment to the store owner if the store owner has the authentic ownership of the product and makes a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased. When the "Account" 1002 tab is selected, the account related user interface is shown in the display area 1006, which shows the member's account balance, earning information, transaction history, sale's reporting, and allows the member to update user data such as contact data and payment method setup, etc. When the "Products" 1003 tab is selected, the product related user interface is shown in the display area 1006 which allows the member to enroll a product for distribution, to update the product information of an already enrolled product, or to activate/de-activate a product listing.
Fig 11 illustrates the applications of historical ownership acquiring activity data stored in activity database. The historical ownership acquiring activity data may be used by the distribution platform or by third party for many service features and applications, such as: (1) Personal transaction history (1101) which allows a member to view his/her ownership acquiring transaction history; (2) Distributor's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting (1102) which allows a member to view his/her distribution transactions and earnings reports related to the products that the member is eligible to distribute; (3) Supplier's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting (1103) which allows a member to view the distribution transactions and earnings analysis and reporting about the products that the member enrolled; (4) Event notifications (1104) which allows a member to notify some or all of his/her ownership acquiring activities to selected people, such as social friends, coworkers, family members, business associates, etc. or to dispatch the activity events to specified event sinks for other computer programs to pick up and process, such as message walls and message streams in the platform or in third party social networks; (5) Friends' transaction analysis ( 1105) -the ownership acquiring activity historical data may be used for data mining among friends to understand better the behavior pattern among friends, for example to generate distribution transaction and earnings reports contributed by friends, to view who are the most active distributors and which types of products friends own or don't own, etc. (6) Personal advertisements (1106) - A
member may incorporate promotional information in ownership acquiring activity event messaging to serve as personal advertisements, for example a member may include a link to his/her one or more stores or embed one of his/her stores in an ownership acquiring event notification to selected people to inform people about his newly acquired product and at the same time to inform where they can purchase said product from said member; (7) Customer intelligence for targeted advertisements (1107) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may also be used for mining customer intelligence for targeted advertisements; (8) Customer intelligence for up-sale recommendations (1108) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may also be used for mining customer intelligence for generating better targeted up-sale recommendations or promotions; (9) Data source for customer relationship management (1109) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may be used as a kind of data source for comprehensive customer relationship management systems.
While the above description contains many specificities, these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of the invention. Many other variations are possible.
Accordingly, the scope of the invention should be determined not by the embodiments illustrated, but by the appended claims and their legal equivalents.
This invention is about the use of authentic ownerships as commissioned distributorships and its application in social distribution participated by a plurality of managed members for distributing a plurality of managed products in a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of stores.
Authentic ownerships are the ownerships being authenticated upon actual ownership acquiring purchasing or gifting activities. Managed members are the members registered with the distribution marketplace. Managed products are the products enrolled with the distribution marketplace by their suppliers. A managed member can enroll products for other members to distribute or distribute authentically owned products enrolled by other members or direct-sale self-enrolled products. A
managed member may be a business member or an individual member.
Fig 1 illustrates how authentic ownerships are acquired, stored and equated with commissioned distributorships to enable ownership-based distribution in a distribution platform operated in the environment comprising a plurality of managed members to participate in distribution, a plurality of managed products to be distributed by the managed members and a plurality of stores to carry out distribution transactions.
The distribution platform comprises distribution server 100 and distribution marketplace 170. The distribution server 100 is responsible for providing ownership based distribution services and related data managements. The distribution server 100 comprises data modules (account module 110, product module 120, ownership module 130, activity module 140), API 150 and server control 160.
The account module 110 provides storage, registration, update and retrieval of managed member account data. The product module 120 provides storage, enrollment, update and retrieval of managed product data. The ownership module 130 provides storage, affirmation and retrieval of authentic ownership data. The activity module 140 provides storage and retrieval of historical ownership acquiring activity data. The API 150 comprises functions for store configurations 151, and functions for processing ownership acquiring activity transactions 152.
The server control 160 is responsible for receiving service requests from stores distributed across communication networks and directing the processing of the requests to related server processing components and returning responses to the stores that initiating the service requests. The marketplace 170 comprises store presentations for carrying out ownership acquiring activities, such as purchasing via a user action 173 in a store 172 or gifting via a user action 175 in a store 174. The applications 180, such as a purchasing application 181 or a gifting application 182, may be integrated with the distribution platform using the function interfaces of data modules (110, 120, 130 and 140) and the API 150.
Server side of the processing components, including storages and interfaces of data modules, implementations of API 150 and server control 160, may reside on the same server machine or scattered into a computing cloud.
The account module 110 comprises account database 111 for storing a plurality of managed member account records in one or more computer readable storage media and a function interface 112 for creating, accessing and managing the stored account records. A member's account record comprises the member's unique user identifier uid which is automatically generated by the platform at the time of account registry, the account balance which is a numerical representation of the member's payment account, and user provided data which further comprise (1) user contact data; (2) payment method setup for indicating how to transfer money in the payment account to the member's chosen destination, wherein the payment method is either one of online payment services such as PayPal or conventional check mailing; (3) default commission setup for self-enrolled products, which is either a percentage of product pricing or a fixed value. The account module interface 112 comprises: (a) account registry function for registering a member account based on user supplied data. The function generates a uid for the member account and creates an account record in the account database 111 with the account balance initialized to zero prior to any payment transactions; (b) account data update function for a member to update user provided data in his/her account; (c) payment processing function for making a payment of a given amount to the account of a given member identified by a uid.
Each member has a public user profile containing the member's public data such as the access to the member's social friends maintained by the platform or by one or more third party social networks that are integrated with the platform. Each member's public user profile also comprises the access to the member's primary store in public mode and user console in private mode. A
member can locate a friend's primary store by navigating to the friend's public user profile.
Every user who wants to participate in the ownership-based distribution must be a managed member. A user can become a managed member by registering a member account.
Any user, either a managed member or an un-managed user, can make a purchase of any product in any store in the distribution marketplace. Only the buyer who is a managed member is affirmed the authentic ownership of a purchased product to automatically become the distributor of the product being purchased, and only a managed member can participate in commissioned distribution or enroll products for ownership-based distribution. A managed member has the right to any of the following:
(a) acquiring the authentic ownership of a product upon purchasing the product or receiving the product as a gift, and distributing the authentically owned product in the member's one or more stores for making commissions; (b) enrolling products for distribution and making supplier's profits from distributions via distributors or from direct-sales in the member's own stores. A managed member may be a business member or an individual member. The methods and systems described in this invention are generic to all managed members without the need to distinguish business members and individual members. Depending on members' personal preferences, some members may exercise the right (a) only; some members may exercise the right (b) only; and some members may exercise both the right (a) and the right (b).
The product module 120 comprises the product database 121 for storing products data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the product module interface 122 which further comprises the functions for creating, storing and managing the product data in the product database 121. The product database 121 stores a plurality of product records, each product record comprises a unique product identifier pid, a supplier's uid, product title, description, price, commission setup, available quantity, delivery type, listing image file, and one or more content files in case of a digital product. A commission setup may be given as a percentage of the product price or a fixed value.
Each product enrolled with the platform is ready for distribution by managed members when its available quantity remains. The available quantity of a digital product is unlimited. The available quantity of a tangible product is provided by the product supplier and dynamically tracked and updated by the platform upon each purchasing activity. When the quantity of a tangible product is sold out, the product will be automatically de-activated in all distribution stores and its distributors cannot distribute the product till a new quantity is supplied by its supplier.
The product module interface 122 comprises: (a) product registry function for enrolling a product which creates the product data record in the product database 121 based on the product data provided by its supplier;
(b) product retrieval function for retrieving detailed product data of a given product identified by a pid; (c) product update function for updating the product data of a given product; (d) product activation/de-activation function for activating or de-activating the listing of a given product.
By enrolling a product with the platform, the product becomes a managed product to be distributed or gifted by managed members. Only a managed product being distributed or gifted is eligible for ownership-based compensation. A managed product may be a digital product or a tangible product.
A raw digital product is delivered digitally via either downloading or online rendering carried out by the platform or by a partner site. A tangible product or a packaged digital product is delivered physically via either shipment or pickup arranged by its supplier. Example categories of digital products include e-books, electronic documents, audio, video, photos, graphics, movies, music, software, digital games, e-cards, interactive media content products and virtual goods.
The ownership module 130 comprises the ownership database 131 for storing authentic ownership data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the ownership module interface 132 which further comprises functions for creating, storing and retrieving authentic ownership data. The ownership database 131 comprises the storage of a plurality of ownership records, each ownership record comprises a unique user identifier (uid) and a unique product identifier (pid) representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product. The ownership module interface 132 comprises: (a) ownership query functions 133 for accessing ownership data stored in the ownership database 131, and (b) ownership affirmation function 134 for creating and storing ownerships into the ownership database 131. The following are some of the functions in the ownership module interface 132:
(1) Query] (uid) - This function takes uid as input parameter and returns a list of pids of all the products that the member associated with the given uid authentically owns.
(2) Query2(uid) - This function takes uid as input parameter and returns a list of authentic ownerships that the member associated with the given uid has.
(3) Query3(uid, pid) - This function takes uid and pid as input parameters and validates the existence of the ownership between the member associated with the given uid and the product associated with the given pid.
(4) Affirm(uid, pid) - This function takes uid and pid as input parameters and affirms an ownership relationship between a member identified by the given uid and a product identified by the given pid into the ownership database if the ownership is not already existent in the ownership database.
The activity module 140 is responsible for storing and accessing historical records of ownership acquiring activities. The activity module comprises the activity database 141 for storing ownership acquiring activity historical data in one or more computer-readable storage media and the activity module interface 142 for recording activity data into the activity database and accessing activity data from the activity database. The activity database contains the storage of a plurality of ownership-acquiring activity records. Each ownership acquiring activity is either a purchasing activity or a gifting activity. Each activity record comprises the uid of a product acquirer, the pid of a product being acquired in the activity, the timestamp of the activity, the type of the activity such as purchasing or gifting, the quantity of the product acquisition, the price of the acquired product, an the gift giver's uid in the case of a gifting activity.
The API 150 comprises store configuration functions 151 and ownership acquiring activity transaction processing functions 152. The store configuration functions 151 are used for the setup and configuration of a store's content and structure on what products are included in the store and how the products in the store are presented in interactive media. The transaction processing 152 processes each purchasing or gifting transaction.
The server control 160 is responsible for receiving service requests from store presentations and user consoles and directing the processing of the requests to related service components and returning the responses back to the respective store presentations and user consoles originating the service requests.
Purchasing activities are carried out in the distribution marketplace 170 which comprises a plurality of store presentations 171 including member store presentations and central store presentation. Each store presentation 172 comprises the listing information about one or more products and the user action means 173 for buyers to initiate purchasing transactions in that store.
When a purchasing means 173 in a store 172 is initiated by a buyer, the store presentation sends a purchasing transaction request to the distribution server 100, then the distribution server control 160 receives the request and directs the processing of the request to the transaction processing 152.
A member may have one or more store presentations in the marketplace 170. Each of a member's one or more store presentations comprises: (1) the products that the member authentically owned for commissioned distribution; or (2) the products that the member enrolled for distribution; or (3) the combination of (1) and (2).
A gifting activity may be initiated from a store 174 via a user action means 175 or from a gifting application 182 which is integrated with the distribution platform. Each gifting transaction request is transmitted to the distribution server 100 and is received by the server control 160 and directed to transaction processing 152 for further processing.
The data modules 110, 120, 130, 140 and the API 150 may be accessed locally or remotely by the distribution platform and applications. The remote access may be implemented using one or more of the communication protocols comprising TCP/IP, RPC, and HTTP.
The transaction processing 152 processes each transaction request received from a store presentation (172, 174) or an application (181, 182). Each ownership acquiring activity transaction comprises one or more ownership acquiring orders. For example, a purchasing transaction initiated by a single purchasing action means contains one purchasing order, a purchasing transaction initiated by a multi-purchasing action means such as a shopping cart checkout operation contains one or more purchasing orders. Each ownership acquiring order in an ownership acquiring transaction is processed by the order processing illustrated in Fig 2, wherein the order processing comprises the steps of.
(a) Payment processing (201) - The payment processing verifies the buyer's payment amount and accepts the payment for the ordered quantity of a product. This step is for a purchasing or a gifting order which involves purchasing payment. This step is skipped for a gifting order which does not involve purchasing payment.
(b) Delivery processing (202) - The delivery processing is responsible for delivering a purchased product to its buyer or a gifted product to its recipient via either digital-delivery or physical-delivery depending on the delivery type of the product specified by its supplier.
Digital-delivery comprises downloading and online rendering which may be carried out using one or more of the protocols comprising HTTP, FTP and TCP/IP.
Downloading delivery type delivers a digital product by file transferring. Online rendering delivery type transmits a digital product for real-time consumption, such as listening to a music, reading a book, viewing a photo image, playing a video, etc. Physical-delivery comprises shipment and pickup, in which shipment delivery type ships a product to buyer or a gift recipient's postal address by the product supplier, and pickup delivery type allows a member to pickup an acquired product from one of the supplier's sites.
(c) Ownership-specific purchasing order processing (203) - This step is responsible for ownership specific purchasing order processing, such as ownership based compensation.
This step is further illustrated in Fig 3.
(d) Ownership-specific gifting order processing (204) - This step is responsible for ownership specific gifting order processing, in which a gift recipient is affirmed the authentic ownership of a gifted product. This step is further illustrated in Fig 4.
(e) Activity event processing (205) - This step records the ownership acquiring activity in the activity database 141.
An existing e-commerce application which already has payment processing and delivery processing may integrate with the ownership-specific purchasing processing step 203 and/or ownership-based gifting order processing 204.
Fig 3 illustrates the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (203) which processes each purchasing order in the following steps:
(a) Owner's Distributorship Processing (301) - This step enrolls the owner of the product being purchased in said purchasing order as a distributor of the product by affirming said owner's authentic ownership of the product being purchased into the ownership database 131. In a normal purchasing order, the owner is the buyer; in a gift purchasing order, the owner is the gift recipient; and in a sponsored purchasing order, the owner is the buyer being sponsored.
A non-member owner may be asked to register for a membership in order to obtain the authentic ownership affirmation.
(b) Distributor's Commission Processing (302) - This step makes a commission payment to the actual seller associated with the order if the actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a member's store is the owner of the store where the purchasing order is initiated. The actual seller of a direct-sale purchasing order initiated directly from a store of the supplier of the product being purchased is the supplier. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a central store is the supplier of the product being purchased. The actual seller of a purchasing order initiated from a re-directed commerce presentation is the owner of the topmost store presentation originating the chain of redirections if the topmost store is a member store, otherwise the actual seller is the supplier of the product being purchased. If the actual seller has authentic ownership of the product being purchased, this step determines the amount of commission for the product based on the product commission setup retrieved from the product database 121 via product module interface 122. When the product specific commission setup is not given, the default commission setup is retrieved from the supplier's account stored in the account database 111 via account module interface 112.
The commission being calculated is then paid in full to the actual seller without sharing with anyone else. The commission is credited to the actual seller's payment account stored in the account database 111 via payment processing function in the account module interface 112.
(c) Supplier's Profit Processing (303) - This step makes a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased. It determines the supplier of the product being purchased and calculates the supplier's profit for the purchasing order and pays the resulting profit to the supplier's payment account stored in the account database 111 via payment processing function in the account module interface 112. The supplier's profit is calculated by deducting the order's transactional costs from the purchasing price of the product being purchased. The transactional costs of an order comprise a commission to be paid to the actual seller if the actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased.
Beside the commission cost, the transactional costs may also comprise a transaction fee charged by the service provider. The transaction fee may be a percentage of the product price or a fixed value. The transaction fee may be zero if the service is free.
When a product being purchased in a member's store is the product enrolled by the store owner, the purchasing order is a direct-sale. When a product being purchased in a member's store is the product that the store owner has authentic ownership, the purchasing order is a distribution via a distributor.
In a direct-sale, the direct participants are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, for which the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased and the supplier is paid a profit without incurring commission cost. In a distribution, the direct participants are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased, for which the buyer is compensated with the affirmation of the authentic ownership of the product being purchased, the distributor is paid a commission and the supplier is paid a profit.
Ownership propagations of a product are originally seeded by direct sales and are populated by subsequent distributions. The ownership-based compensation (301, 302, 303) deals with only the direct participants, cutting out all the middlemen, thus enabling a simple and efficient distribution framework.
Ownership-based gifting grants gift recipients' the authentic ownerships of the managed products being gifted. Unlike conventional gift-giving practices and applications in which the gifted products are inactive objects, the ownership-based gifting turns gifted products into active money making opportunities for gift recipients. As illustrated in Fig 4, different gift-giving operations may require different treatment, but all share the common step in processing, that is to affirm a gift recipient's authentic ownership of a gifted product so that the gift recipient automatically becomes an authorized commissioned distributor of the gifted product. The ownership affirmation is accomplished by using the affirmation function 134 in the ownership module 130.
(a) Gift purchasing (401) - A gift purchasing operation allows a first member to make a purchase of a product for a second member, in which the first member makes the payment for the product and the second member receives the delivery of the product. A
gift purchasing operation is processed by the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (Fig 3) in which the gift recipient is affirmed the authentic ownership of the gifted product.
(b) Sponsored Purchasing (402) - A sponsored purchasing operation allows a member to make a purchase of a product paid by a pre-authorized sponsor. For example a child may make a purchase of a book via parent sponsored payment arrangement. A sponsored purchasing operation is processed by the ownership-specific purchasing order processing (Fig 3) in which the sponsor is the gift giver and the buyer who is sponsored is considered the gift-recipient of the purchased product and is affirmed the authentic ownership of the purchased product being paid by the sponsor.
(c) Gift Giveaway (403) - A gift-giveaway operation does not involve purchasing. It is the operation for a supplier to gift a product to a member. A gift-giveaway operation is processed by the ownership affirmation step 134 to affirm the gift recipient's authentic ownership of the gifted product.
(d) Ownership Transferring (404) - A product authentic ownership may be transferred to a new owner by its existing owner. An ownership transferring operation is processed by affirming the new owner's authentic ownership of the related product in step 134 and canceling the ownership of the existing owner. The above step of affirming a new ownership and canceling the old ownership may be simplified into one step of changing the existing owner's uid in the ownership of the transferred product to the uid of the new owner.
(e) Gift rewarding (405) - A gift rewarding operation is a means for a supplier to reward its own products to members who made contributions to the supplier with gifted products. The type of contributions can be any acts of favor to a supplier which are identifiable and traceable by the supplier, such as filling in an online survey, making a suggestion, reporting a problem, providing help, providing service, etc. A member who receives a rewarded product in a gift rewarding operation is affirmed the authentic ownership of the rewarded product in step 134.
A gifted product may be delivered digitally or physically depending on the type of delivery of the product being specified by its supplier. In the case of a physical delivery, the gift giver is responsible for arranging the shipment or pickup.
In this ownership-based distribution platform, the use of authentic ownerships for distributorships involves the following:
(1) The ownership module provides computer readable storage media for storing authentic ownerships data so that authentic ownerships are tracked and stored for use by the distribution platform and the associated applications.
(2) The authentic ownerships stored in said ownership data storage are automatically equated with the corresponding distributorships, so that each member can include in that member's one or more store presentations the products that the member has authentic ownerships stored in said ownerships data storage for commissioned distributions. By doing so, each member is automatically a commissioned distributor of all the products that the member authentically owns.
(3) The order processing affirms the buyer's ownership of a purchased product for each purchasing order in a transaction triggered by a user action means in a store presentation.
The new ownership is created and stored in said ownerships data storage if the ownership is not already existent.
(4) The order processing compensates the actual seller in each purchasing order in a purchasing transaction with a commission payment if the actual seller is a distributor of the product being purchased, that is the actual seller has the authentic owner of the product being purchased.
Purchasing transactions are carried out in the distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of store presentations. Each store presentation is a user actionable commerce presentation which comprises descriptions of one or more products and a user action means for a user to initiate ownership acquiring transactions from said store. A product description may be factual or promotional. Each store presentation is a distributable store interacting with the distribution server across communication networks. A user's action request in a store presentation is sent to the distribution server and the distribution server processes the request and then returns the response back to the store.
Each member has one or more store presentations, one of them is selected by the member as the primary store which is accessible from the member's public user profile and allows the member to access in private console mode to other platform services such as updating account data, enrolling products, and viewing earnings, etc.
Fig 5A illustrates a store presentation which comprises one or more product presentation units displayed in a display area 501, each product presentation unit comprises product descriptive content 502 and a user action means 503 for a user to initiate an ownership-acquiring action against the presented product 502. The product presentation units in a store presentation may further be organized into a navigational hierarchy using navigational categories 504 in which when a category is selected, the product presentation units associated with that category are shown in the display area 501.
Fig 5B illustrates a store presentation in the form of promotion which comprises a product promotional unit in the display area 505. The promotional unit further comprises promotional content for a product 506 and a user action means 507 for a user to initiate an ownership acquiring action against the promoted product. Navigational categories 508 may be used to organize multiple promotional units, in which when a category is selected, the promotional unit associated with the selected category is shown in the display area 505.
A user action means may be a single product purchasing means, a multi-product purchasing means or a redirection means which redirects the user to another commerce presentation. A user action request initiated from a store presentation is sent to the distribution server for processing.
Fig 6 illustrates example types of user action means which can be initiated from a store presentation.
(a) direct single purchasing action such as a "Buy" button 601 - The single purchasing action means carries the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product being purchased in the single purchasing transaction request and sends the request to the distribution server for purchasing transaction processing which in turn invokes the ownership-specific order processing illustrated in Fig 3.
(b) direct multi-purchasing shopping cart operation - such as "Add to Cart"
button 602 for adding a product order to a shopping cart and "Checkout" button 603 for sending the multi-product purchasing transaction request to the distribution server. Each time when a product order is added to a shopping cart, the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product are included and when the shopping cart checkout action is activated, a multi-product purchasing transaction request encapsulating one or more product orders is sent to the distribution server for processing. The distribution server processes a multi-product purchasing transaction by repeatedly invoking the ownership-specific order processing illustrated in Fig 3 for each purchasing order in the purchasing transaction.
(c) redirection means to redirect a user to another commerce presentation -For example "More..." button 604 is a redirection means for opening up another store presentation 605 which contains the detailed product description 606 of the associated product and a user action means 607 for acting upon the presented product, wherein the user action means 607 may be a direct action means, for example a direct single product purchasing means 601, or a direct multi-product purchasing means 602, 603. The redirection may carry one or more levels down, in which the actual seller is the owner of the top most store presentation originating the chain of redirections. The identity of the actual seller is passed down from the top originating store presentation containing the redirection action means to the level where the direct ownership acquiring action is initiated.
Fig 7 illustrates the example types of interactive digital media for carrying the store presentations.
(a) Internet contents & applications (701) - This category comprises Internet web pages, blogs, and Internet applications. For example, a member may include the access of a store presentation in his/her web site, blog or personal profile of a third party social network application.
(b) Messaging contents and applications (702) - This category comprises communication and messaging contents and applications, such as micro-blogging, email, instant messaging, etc.
For example, a member may include the access to a store presentation in a micro-blogging message, an email, or an instant message, etc.
(c) Mobile contents and applications (703) - This category comprises the contents and applications for mobile communication devices, such as laptop, netbook, smart phone, smartbook, pocket PC, Internet Tablet, etc. A store presentation may be displayed on the screen of a mobile device for a user to browse and to make purchases.
(d) Interactive TV contents (704) - Store presentations may be inserted in interactive TV
contents for viewers to view and act upon.
(e) Interactive game contents and applications (705) - Access to store presentations may be inserted into interactive gaming contents or applications for users to view and act upon.
(f) Interactive software contents and applications (706) - Access to store presentations may be inserted into interactive software contents and applications for users to view and act upon.
Fig 8 illustrates different methods of store presentation rendering in carrying media.
(a) Hosted by server (801) - A store presentation object may be hosted by the distribution server and referenced in a carrying media, and rendered in the carrying media when the carrying media is rendered. For example, a store presentation object hosted at a server may be referred by the object address or identification such as URL and rendered in the hosting contents such as HTML contents.
(b) Embedded in contents (802) - A store presentation object code may be fully embedded in a carrying media. For example, a store presentation object in HTML compatible format may be dynamically embedded in a carrying html document with DHTML or AJAX
scripting, etc. A store presentation object implemented as a rich media object such as a Flash movie may be embedded in raw binary in a MHTML document or contents in other compiled formats.
(c) Generated on-demand (803) - The actual object code of a store presentation may be dynamically generated on-demand and rendered in a carrying media dynamically.
A
dynamic store may be generated at the server side or at the client side. In the former case, a carrying media sends a customized store generation request to the distribution server, and the distribution server returns the generated store presentation object to the carrying media for rendering. In the latter case, the carrying media generates the dynamic store on the fly and dynamically inserts the generated store in-place.
A rendered store presentation object is a user actionable interactive media object which interacts remotely with the distribution server over communication network connections, including wired connections, wireless connections, Internet or hybrid connections.
Fig 9 illustrates store configuration operations. Each member has a master list 901 which contains the products that said member has rights to distribute or to direct sell. A
member has the rights to distribute any of the products that the member has authentic ownerships or to direct-sell any products that the member self-enrolled. The master list may be scoped by category "All" 902, "Owned" 903 or "Enrolled" 904, wherein category "All" 902 retrieves all the products that the member has authentic ownerships and that the member enrolled; the category "Owned" 903 retrieves all the products that the member has authentic ownerships; the category "Enrolled" 904 retrieves all the products that the member enrolled. Each product in the master list 901 contains the product related information such as PID 906, price 907, commission 908, disclosure policy 909, etc.
The disclosure policy may be configured to define the scope of a product visibility. The disclosure policy may be public, private or protected. A product listing with public disclosure is visible by any users. A product listing with private disclosure is visible only by the store owner. A product listing with protected disclosure is visible by the store owner and the friends of the store owner. A member can create one or more store presentations by store creation 910 which generates a unique store identifier for each newly created empty stores to be configured to include products from the master list 901. The created one or more stores are listed in the store list 914. One of the stores in the store list 914 may be selected as a primary store which can be accessible from the member's public user profile. Any one of the stores 914 can be selected as the active store 915 for configurations. Products can be included into or excluded from the active store by "automatic"
operation 911, "interactive"
operation 912 or "manual" operation 913. The "automatic" operation includes all the products that the member is eligible to sell or to distribute. The "interactive" operation 912 allows a member to interactively include products selected from the master list 901 into the active store or exclude products from the active store. The manual operation 913 is via manual editing of the store presentation code. The presentation style and theme of a store is automatically formatted by the platform and can be customized. The generated store presentation includes the product listing information and user action means such as buy button or shopping cart operation buttons. The generated primary store is a user console which contains a member's private access to platform services such as updating account data, enroll products, view earnings, etc.
The type of action means, either a single purchasing means or a multi-purchase means, is selected in parameter setup 916. The action means is constructed in the way that when a purchasing action is invoked in a store presentation, the identities of the seller, the buyer and the product are embedded in the purchasing transaction request to be sent to the distribution server upon activation. The code generation operation 917 generates distributable store presentation object or widget for the active store 915 which can be portable to or embeddable in carrying interactive media contents.
The code generation operation may also be used to generate store object code on-demand. A
generated store presentation object is in a user selected format among many standard content and application formats specified in parameter setup 916.
Fig 10 illustrates a member's primary store with private console access to the platform services. The primary store is accessible from the member's public profile, in which the store is public to all users and the console access is private to the store owner. The console access comprises a command area 1000 and a display area 1006. The command area 1000 contains "Store" 1001, "Account" 1002, "Products" 1003, "Store Config" 1004 and "Central" 1005. The "Store" 1001 tab and the "Central"
1005 tab are public to all users. The "Account" 1002 tab, the "Products" 1003 tab and the "Store Config" 1004 tab are private to the store owner. When "Store" 1001 tab is selected, a store listing request is sent to the distribution server and the server returns the member's primary store listing to be displayed in the display area 1006. When "Store Config" 1004 tab is selected, the display area shows the user interface for a member to configure his/her one or more stores, including the primary store showed in the member's public profile and other stores to be distributed to third party interactive content sites. When "Central" 1005 is clicked, the platform central store presentation is shown in a separate window or in the display area 1006 which contains the access to all the products enrolled with the platform by all suppliers. The "Buy" button 1007 is a single purchasing means for initiating the purchasing of the associated product and the "More" button 1008 is a redirection means for displaying detailed product information. When a "Buy" button of a listed product is pressed, a purchasing transaction request containing a single purchasing order is sent to the distribution server for processing, which affirms the buyer's ownership of the purchased product and makes a commission payment to the store owner if the store owner has the authentic ownership of the product and makes a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased. When the "Account" 1002 tab is selected, the account related user interface is shown in the display area 1006, which shows the member's account balance, earning information, transaction history, sale's reporting, and allows the member to update user data such as contact data and payment method setup, etc. When the "Products" 1003 tab is selected, the product related user interface is shown in the display area 1006 which allows the member to enroll a product for distribution, to update the product information of an already enrolled product, or to activate/de-activate a product listing.
Fig 11 illustrates the applications of historical ownership acquiring activity data stored in activity database. The historical ownership acquiring activity data may be used by the distribution platform or by third party for many service features and applications, such as: (1) Personal transaction history (1101) which allows a member to view his/her ownership acquiring transaction history; (2) Distributor's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting (1102) which allows a member to view his/her distribution transactions and earnings reports related to the products that the member is eligible to distribute; (3) Supplier's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting (1103) which allows a member to view the distribution transactions and earnings analysis and reporting about the products that the member enrolled; (4) Event notifications (1104) which allows a member to notify some or all of his/her ownership acquiring activities to selected people, such as social friends, coworkers, family members, business associates, etc. or to dispatch the activity events to specified event sinks for other computer programs to pick up and process, such as message walls and message streams in the platform or in third party social networks; (5) Friends' transaction analysis ( 1105) -the ownership acquiring activity historical data may be used for data mining among friends to understand better the behavior pattern among friends, for example to generate distribution transaction and earnings reports contributed by friends, to view who are the most active distributors and which types of products friends own or don't own, etc. (6) Personal advertisements (1106) - A
member may incorporate promotional information in ownership acquiring activity event messaging to serve as personal advertisements, for example a member may include a link to his/her one or more stores or embed one of his/her stores in an ownership acquiring event notification to selected people to inform people about his newly acquired product and at the same time to inform where they can purchase said product from said member; (7) Customer intelligence for targeted advertisements (1107) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may also be used for mining customer intelligence for targeted advertisements; (8) Customer intelligence for up-sale recommendations (1108) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may also be used for mining customer intelligence for generating better targeted up-sale recommendations or promotions; (9) Data source for customer relationship management (1109) - the ownership acquiring activity historical data may be used as a kind of data source for comprehensive customer relationship management systems.
While the above description contains many specificities, these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of the invention. Many other variations are possible.
Accordingly, the scope of the invention should be determined not by the embodiments illustrated, but by the appended claims and their legal equivalents.
Claims (64)
1. A computer-implemented method of distribution, participated by a plurality of managed members to distribute a plurality of managed products in a marketplace comprising a plurality of stores, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of:
(a) providing at least one computer readable storage medium for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) for each ownership acquiring transaction causing a member to acquire one or more products, affirming said member's authentic ownership of each of said acquired products into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
whereby a member's authentic ownerships being affirmed upon that member's ownership acquiring activities are equated with said member's corresponding commissioned distributorships so that said member is eligible to distribute said member's authentically owned products for making commissions.
(a) providing at least one computer readable storage medium for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) for each ownership acquiring transaction causing a member to acquire one or more products, affirming said member's authentic ownership of each of said acquired products into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
whereby a member's authentic ownerships being affirmed upon that member's ownership acquiring activities are equated with said member's corresponding commissioned distributorships so that said member is eligible to distribute said member's authentically owned products for making commissions.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein a member's authentic ownership of a product is permanent during the production life cycle of said product.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein a member's authentic ownership of a product is transferable.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein a product being acquired is either a digital product or a tangible product.
5. The method of claim 4, wherein a raw digital product is delivered digitally via either downloading or online rendering.
6. The method of claim 4, wherein a tangible product or a packaged digital product is delivered physically via either shipment or pickup.
7. The method of claim 6, wherein the physical delivery of a purchased product is handled by the supplier of said product.
8. The method of claim 6, wherein the physical delivery of a gifted product is handled by the gift giver.
9. The method of claim 1, wherein said ownership acquiring transaction is a purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer from said marketplace or from an application integrated with said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders;
wherein for each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction, said affirmation affirms said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in that purchasing order.
wherein for each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction, said affirmation affirms said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in that purchasing order.
10. The method of claim 9, wherein each purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by making a commission payment to the actual seller associated with said purchasing order if said actual seller has authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order.
11. The method of claim 10, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order initiated directly from a member's store presentation is the owner of said store.
12. The method of claim 10, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order directly initiated from a central store is the supplier of the product being purchased.
13. The method of claim 10, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order initiated from a redirected store presentation is the owner of the topmost store presentation originating the chain of redirections if said topmost store is a member store, otherwise the actual seller is the supplier of the product being purchased.
14. The method of claim 9, wherein each purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by making a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in that purchasing order.
15. The method of claim 9, wherein each member has one or more stores, each of that member's one or more stores comprising a commerce presentation of a selection of one or more products that said member has authentic ownerships or that said member enrolled or that of the combination of both.
16. The method of claim 1, wherein said ownership acquiring transaction is a gifting transaction, said gifting transaction comprising one or more gifting orders, wherein for each gifting order in said gifting transaction, said affirmation affirms the gift recipient's authentic ownership of the product being gifted in said gifting order.
17. The method of claim 16, wherein a gifting order is a gift-purchasing operation in which a first member makes a purchase of a product for a second member, wherein the first member makes the payment for purchasing said product and the second member receives the delivery of said product, wherein the second member is the gift recipient and is affirmed the authentic ownership of the gifted product.
18. The method of claim 16, wherein a gifting order is a sponsored purchasing operation in which a member makes a purchase of a product which is paid by a pre-authorized sponsor, wherein said member is affirmed the authentic ownership of said product.
19. The method of claim 16, wherein a gifting order is a gift giveaway operation in which a supplier gives away a product to a member, wherein said member is affirmed the authentic ownership of said product.
20. The method of claim 16, wherein a gifting order is an ownership transferring operation in which a product ownership is transferred from a first member to a second member, wherein the owner in said ownership is changed from the first member to the second member.
21. The method of claim 16, wherein a gifting order is a gift rewarding operation in which a first member rewards a product to a second member for rewarding an act of contribution that the second member made to the first member, wherein the second member is the reward recipient and is affirmed the authentic ownership of the rewarded product.
22. The method of claim 1, wherein the ownership acquiring activity associated with each ownership acquiring order is recorded in an activity historical database for use by one or more applications.
23. A computer program product comprising one or more computer readable storage media having a computer program embodied therein for execution by one or more processors to carry out the method of claim 1, wherein said storage media and processors may be co-located locally or distributed across communication networks.
24. A carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of statements and instructions which, when executed by one or more processors causes said one or more processors to carry out the method of claim 1.
25. A computer-implemented system of distribution, participated by a plurality of managed members to distribute a plurality of managed products in a marketplace comprising a plurality of stores, the computer-implemented system comprising:
(a) at least one computer readable storage medium for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) transaction means for processing each ownership acquiring transaction which comprises one or more ownership acquiring orders, wherein each ownership acquiring order is processed by affirming said member's authentic ownership of the acquired product into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
whereby a member's authentic ownerships being affirmed upon that member's ownership acquiring transactions are equated with that member's corresponding commissioned distributorships so that said member is eligible to distribute said member's authentically owned products for making commissions.
(a) at least one computer readable storage medium for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) transaction means for processing each ownership acquiring transaction which comprises one or more ownership acquiring orders, wherein each ownership acquiring order is processed by affirming said member's authentic ownership of the acquired product into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
whereby a member's authentic ownerships being affirmed upon that member's ownership acquiring transactions are equated with that member's corresponding commissioned distributorships so that said member is eligible to distribute said member's authentically owned products for making commissions.
26. The system of claim 25, wherein said ownership acquiring transaction is a purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer from said marketplace or from an application integrated with said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders;
wherein for each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction, said affirmation affirms said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in that purchasing order.
wherein for each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction, said affirmation affirms said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in that purchasing order.
27. The system of claim 25, wherein said ownership acquiring transaction is a gifting transaction, said gifting transaction comprising one or more gifting orders, wherein for each gifting order in said gifting transaction, said affirmation affirms the gift recipient's authentic ownership of the product being gifted in said gifting order.
28. The system of claim 25, wherein the ownership acquiring activity associated with each ownership acquiring order is recorded in an activity historical database for use by one or more applications.
29. A computer-implemented method of distribution, participated by a plurality of managed members for distributing a plurality of managed products in a distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of stores, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of:
(a) storing authentic ownership data in one or more computer readable storage media, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) processing each purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer in said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders initiated from one or more stores, each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by the steps of:
1) affirming said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
2) making a commission payment to the actual seller associated with said purchasing order if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
3) making a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
whereby all direct participants (the buyer, the supplier and optionally the distributor) involved in said purchasing order are compensated, wherein the direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order or a purchasing order from a central store are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, and the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased.
(a) storing authentic ownership data in one or more computer readable storage media, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) processing each purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer in said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders initiated from one or more stores, each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by the steps of:
1) affirming said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
2) making a commission payment to the actual seller associated with said purchasing order if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
3) making a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
whereby all direct participants (the buyer, the supplier and optionally the distributor) involved in said purchasing order are compensated, wherein the direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order or a purchasing order from a central store are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, and the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased.
30. The method of claim 29, wherein said purchasing order is initiated directly from a member store which comprises a selection of one or more products that said member has authentic ownerships or that said member enrolled or that of the combination of both, wherein the actual seller associated with said purchasing order is the owner of said store.
31. The method of claim 29, wherein said purchasing order is initiated directly from a central store which comprises the listing of a plurality of products enrolled by a plurality of suppliers, wherein the actual seller associated with said purchasing order is the supplier of the product being purchased.
32. The method of claim 29, wherein said purchasing order is initiated directly from a redirected commerce presentation, wherein if the topmost store originating the chain of redirections is a member store, the actual seller of said purchasing order is the owner of said member store, otherwise the actual seller is the supplier of the product being purchased.
33. A computer program product comprising one or more computer readable storage media having a computer program embodied therein for execution by one or more processors to carry out the method of claim 29, wherein said storage media and processors may be co-located locally or distributed across communication networks.
34. A carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of statements and instructions which, when executed by one or more processors causes said one or more processors to carry out the method in claim 29.
35. A computer-implemented system of distribution, participated by a plurality of managed members for distributing a plurality of managed products in a marketplace comprising a plurality of stores, the computer-implemented system comprising:
(a) one or more computer readable storage media for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) transaction processing means for processing each purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer in said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders initiated from one or more stores, each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by a processing unit comprising:
1) means for affirming said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased;
2) means for determining the actual seller associated with said purchasing order and making a commission payment to said actual seller if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
3) means for determining the supplier's profit and making the profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
whereby all direct participants (the buyer, the supplier and optionally the distributor) involved in said purchasing order are compensated, wherein the direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order or a purchasing order from a central store are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, and the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased.
(a) one or more computer readable storage media for storing authentic ownership data, said ownership data storage comprising a plurality of ownership records, wherein each ownership record comprising a unique member identifier and a unique product identifier representing the ownership relationship between the associated member and the associated product;
(b) transaction processing means for processing each purchasing transaction initiated by a buyer in said marketplace, said purchasing transaction comprising one or more product purchasing orders initiated from one or more stores, each product purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by a processing unit comprising:
1) means for affirming said buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased;
2) means for determining the actual seller associated with said purchasing order and making a commission payment to said actual seller if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
3) means for determining the supplier's profit and making the profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order;
whereby all direct participants (the buyer, the supplier and optionally the distributor) involved in said purchasing order are compensated, wherein the direct participants in a direct-sale purchasing order or a purchasing order from a central store are the buyer and the supplier of the product being purchased, and the direct participants in a distribution purchasing order are the buyer, the supplier and the distributor of the product being purchased.
36. A computer-implemented method of distribution, operated in the environment comprising a plurality of managed members to participate in distributing a plurality of managed products, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of:
(a) providing a distribution server for facilitating said distribution, said server comprising the functionalities of: (1) account management, (2) product management, (3) ownership management, and (4) purchasing transaction processing; wherein a user registers a managed member account via said account management, enrolls a managed product for distribution via said product management, obtains the benefits of ownership-based distribution via said purchasing transaction processing which internally uses said ownership management;
(b) providing a distribution marketplace, said distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributed store presentations for carrying out purchasing transactions across communication networks, wherein a purchasing transaction initiated in a store presentation causes said store to send the request of said purchasing transaction to said server for being processed by said purchasing transaction processing.
(a) providing a distribution server for facilitating said distribution, said server comprising the functionalities of: (1) account management, (2) product management, (3) ownership management, and (4) purchasing transaction processing; wherein a user registers a managed member account via said account management, enrolls a managed product for distribution via said product management, obtains the benefits of ownership-based distribution via said purchasing transaction processing which internally uses said ownership management;
(b) providing a distribution marketplace, said distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributed store presentations for carrying out purchasing transactions across communication networks, wherein a purchasing transaction initiated in a store presentation causes said store to send the request of said purchasing transaction to said server for being processed by said purchasing transaction processing.
37. The method of claim 36, wherein each store presentation is an interactive media presentation of one or more products with embedded user action means to initiate purchasing transactions of presented products.
38. The method of claim 37, wherein each store presentation is rendered in one of the following means: (1) hosted by said server and rendered in carrying media; (2) embedded in carrying media;
(3) generated on demand by either said server or said carrying media and rendered by said carrying media dynamically.
(3) generated on demand by either said server or said carrying media and rendered by said carrying media dynamically.
39. The method of claim 37, wherein said store presentation is accessible from a carrying interactive media content across communication networks, wherein said carrying interactive media content is in one or more of the categories selected from the group consisting of Internet contents and applications, messaging contents and applications, mobile contents and applications, interactive TV
contents and applications, interactive Gaming contents and applications, interactive software contents and applications.
contents and applications, interactive Gaming contents and applications, interactive software contents and applications.
40. The method of claim 37, wherein a product description in said store presentation is factual or promotional.
41. The method of claim 37, wherein products in a member's one or more stores are configurable automatically, interactively or manually to include a selection of products that said member has authentic ownerships or that said member enrolled or that of the combination of both.
42. The method of claim 41, wherein the visibility of a product in a member's store can be scoped with disclosure policy.
43. The method of claim 42, wherein the disclosure policy of a product in a member's store is one selected from the group consisting of public, private and protected, wherein a product with public disclosure is visible by any users, a product with private disclosure is visible only by the store owner, and a product with protected disclosure is visible by the store owner and the friends of the store owner.
44. The method of claim 41, wherein one of a member's one or more stores is selected as a primary store to be displayed in the member's public user profile, wherein said primary store contains console access to the platform services in addition to an embedded store presentation.
45. The method of claim 44, wherein said member's public user profile contains the access to said member's social friends.
46. The method of claim 44, wherein said member's primary store further comprising public access to a central store.
47. The method of claim 36, wherein said purchasing transaction comprises one or more product purchasing orders, wherein each purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by ownership-based purchasing order processing in the steps comprising:
(a) affirming the buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
(b) making a commission payment to the actual seller associated with said purchasing order if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order.
(a) affirming the buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
(b) making a commission payment to the actual seller associated with said purchasing order if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order.
48. The method of claim 47, wherein each purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by making a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order.
49. The method of claim 47, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order initiated directly from a member's store presentation is the owner of said store.
50. The method of claim 47, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order directly initiated from a central store is the supplier of the product being purchased.
51. The method of claim 47, wherein the actual seller in a purchasing order initiated from a redirected store presentation is the owner of the topmost store presentation originating the chain of redirections if said topmost store is a member store, otherwise the actual seller is the supplier of the product being purchased.
52. The method of claim 47, wherein a product being purchased is delivered digitally or physically, in which a raw digital product is delivered digitally via either downloading or online rendering, and a tangible product or a packaged digital product is delivered physically via either shipment or pickup.
53. The method of claim 52, wherein the digital delivery of a purchased product is handled by the platform or by the application originating the purchasing order, the physical delivery of a purchased product is handled by the supplier of said product.
54. The method of claim 47, wherein a purchasing activity associated with each purchasing order is recorded in an activity historical database for use by one or more applications.
55. A computer program product comprising at least one computer readable storage medium having a computer program embodied therein for execution by one or more processors to carry out the method of claim 36, wherein said storage media and processors may be co-located locally or distributed across communication networks.
56. A carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of statements and instructions which, when executed by one or more processors causes said one or more processors to carry out the method of claim 36.
57. A computer-implemented system of distribution, operated in the environment comprising a plurality of managed members to participate in distributing a plurality of managed products, the computer-implemented system comprising:
(a) a distribution server for facilitating said distribution, said server further comprising: (1) means for account management, (2) means for product management, (3) means for ownership management, and (4) means for purchasing transaction processing, wherein a user registers a managed member account via said account management, enrolls a managed product for distribution via said product management, obtains the benefits of ownership-based distribution via said purchasing transaction processing which internally uses said ownership management;
(b) a distribution marketplace, said distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributed store presentations for carrying out purchasing transactions across communication networks, wherein a purchasing transaction initiated in a store presentation causes said store to send the request of said purchasing transaction to said server for being processed by said purchasing transaction processing.
(a) a distribution server for facilitating said distribution, said server further comprising: (1) means for account management, (2) means for product management, (3) means for ownership management, and (4) means for purchasing transaction processing, wherein a user registers a managed member account via said account management, enrolls a managed product for distribution via said product management, obtains the benefits of ownership-based distribution via said purchasing transaction processing which internally uses said ownership management;
(b) a distribution marketplace, said distribution marketplace comprising a plurality of distributed store presentations for carrying out purchasing transactions across communication networks, wherein a purchasing transaction initiated in a store presentation causes said store to send the request of said purchasing transaction to said server for being processed by said purchasing transaction processing.
58. The system of claim 57, wherein each store presentation is rendered in one of the means selected from the group consisting of: (1) hosted by the server and rendered in carrying media contents; (2) embedded in carrying media contents; (3) generated on demand by either said server or said carrying media and rendered dynamically in carrying media content.
59. The system of claim 57, wherein the carrying media is in one or more of the categories selected from the group consisting of Internet contents and applications, messaging contents and applications, mobile contents and applications, interactive TV contents and applications, interactive Gaming contents and applications, interactive software contents and applications.
60. The system of claim 57, further comprises a store configuration means for a member to configure one or more of said member's stores, each of which comprise the description of a selection of products that said member has authentic ownerships or that said member enrolled or that of the combination of both.
61. The system of claim 57, wherein said purchasing transaction comprises one or more product purchasing orders, each purchasing order in said purchasing transaction is further processed by a purchasing order processing unit which further comprises:
(a) means for affirming the buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
(b) means for determining the actual seller associated with said purchasing order and making a commission payment to said actual seller if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased.
(a) means for affirming the buyer's authentic ownership of the product being purchased in said purchasing order into said ownership data storage if said ownership is new;
(b) means for determining the actual seller associated with said purchasing order and making a commission payment to said actual seller if said actual seller has the authentic ownership of the product being purchased.
62. The system of claim 61, wherein said purchasing order processing unit further comprises a means for making a profit payment to the supplier of the product being purchased in said purchasing order.
63. A carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of ownership acquiring activity records for use by an application program, wherein said ownership acquiring activity records are collected by an ownership-based distribution system which allows members to acquire authentic ownerships upon actual ownership acquiring activities and to distribute authentically owned products for making commissions.
64. Each application in claim 22, 54 and 63 is one or the combination of one or more selected from the group consisting of:
(a) Personal transaction history;
(b) Distributor's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting;
(c) Supplier's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting;
(d) Event notifications;
(e) Friends' transaction analysis;
(f) Personal advertisements;
(g) Customer intelligence for targeted advertisements;
(h) Customer intelligence for up-sale recommendations;
(i) Data source for customer relationship management.
(a) Personal transaction history;
(b) Distributor's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting;
(c) Supplier's transaction and earning's analysis and reporting;
(d) Event notifications;
(e) Friends' transaction analysis;
(f) Personal advertisements;
(g) Customer intelligence for targeted advertisements;
(h) Customer intelligence for up-sale recommendations;
(i) Data source for customer relationship management.
Priority Applications (1)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA 2671268 CA2671268A1 (en) | 2009-06-30 | 2009-06-30 | Ownership-based distribution |
Applications Claiming Priority (1)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA 2671268 CA2671268A1 (en) | 2009-06-30 | 2009-06-30 | Ownership-based distribution |
Publications (1)
| Publication Number | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| CA2671268A1 true CA2671268A1 (en) | 2010-12-30 |
Family
ID=43401946
Family Applications (1)
| Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA 2671268 Abandoned CA2671268A1 (en) | 2009-06-30 | 2009-06-30 | Ownership-based distribution |
Country Status (1)
| Country | Link |
|---|---|
| CA (1) | CA2671268A1 (en) |
-
2009
- 2009-06-30 CA CA 2671268 patent/CA2671268A1/en not_active Abandoned
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