System and method for grouping and selling products or services
A system and method for grouping and selling products or services using a computer system, potentially connected to a network. The computer system includes a computer with multiple terminals, potentially instantiated as a server computer or computers and distributed client computers. The computer system presents a sales interface on some terminals. The sales interface shows products or services and groups of products and/or services that are for sale. The computer system presents a back end interface on some terminals, which can be used to enter new products, services and groupings of products and/or services to be offered for sale on the sales interface. Descriptions of the products or service offerings are entered into the computer system either by data entry operators using the back end interface or by a program reading product or service descriptions from external computer systems. The method groups these products or services according to an affinity algorithm. The groupings may then potentially be reviewed and approved or selected by human operators using the back end interface before being offered for sale on the sales interface. One advantageous application is the dynamic packaging of perishable items such as travel goods and services (e.g., airline tickets, rental cars, hotel rooms, entertainment opportunities, etc.).
1. A method of offering at least one package over a decentralized computer network to a consumer using a web browsing appliance, wherein each package includes at least one travel component, and wherein the method comprises:
(a) storing descriptions of available travel components in a database;
(b) storing a plurality of travel package templates in a database;
(c) receiving a request for a package from a consumer; thereafter
(d) dynamically generating, with a computer system, at least one travel package based on the consumer request, at least one of the plurality of travel package templates that is associated with an affinity space description, and at least one available travel component description that includes an affinity space coordinate, wherein the generating includes comparing the affinity space coordinate with the affinity space description;
(e) offering the at least one generated travel package to the consumer by transmitting a description of the generated travel package over the decentralized computer network to the consumer's web browsing appliance; and
(f) performing, with the computer system, a purchasing transaction to purchase at least one of the generated travel packages.
2. The method of claim 1 further including using a screen-scraping technique to obtain the available travel component descriptions.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein each travel package template includes at least one mandatory element schema having an associated affinity space description.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the available travel components each expire within a given time period.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the dynamically generating step occurs without consumer interaction.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein storing the descriptions of the available travel components and storing the plurality of the travel package templates, comprises storing the available travel components and the travel package templates in the same database arrangement.
7. A computer system for offering at least one package over a decentralized computer network to a consumer using a web browsing appliance, wherein each package includes at least one travel component, and wherein the computer system comprises:
a database arrangement that stores:
descriptions of available travel components, at least one of the travel components includes an affinity space coordinate; and
a plurality of travel package templates, at least one of the travel package templates is associated with an affinity space description;
a front end that receives a request for a package from a consumer; and
a back end that thereafter dynamically generates at least one travel package based on the consumer request, at least one of the plurality of travel package templates, and at least one available travel component description, and offers the generated travel package to the consumer by transmitting a description of the generated travel package over the decentralized computer network to the consumer's web browsing appliance, wherein the back end is configured to:
compare the affinity space coordinate with the affinity space description associated with the at least one of the plurality of travel package templates; and
perform a purchasing transaction to purchase at least one of the generated travel packages.
8. The computer system of claim 7 wherein the back end is adapted to dynamically generate at least one travel package without consumer interaction.
9. A method for building packages of components and offering said packages for sale over a data communications network, the method comprising:
storing descriptions of available components within a database, at least one of the descriptions includes an affinity space coordinate;
providing a plurality of package templates stored in a database, at least one of the package templates is associated with an affinity space description;
receiving a request for a package from a consumer, and thereafter dynamically generating, with a computer system, at least one package based at least in part on the consumer request, at least one of the plurality of package templates, and at least one available component description, wherein the generating includes comparing the affinity space coordinate with the affinity space description; and
offering the at least one generated package for sale to a consumer over the data communications network; and
performing, with the computer system, a purchasing transaction to purchase at least one of the generated packages.
10. The method of claim 9 wherein each package template describes a respective travel package, and the components comprise travel components.
11. The method of claim 9 wherein the components describe at least one of attributes and qualities.
12. The method of claim 9 wherein each package template includes at least one mandatory component schema and at least one optional component schema.
13. The method of claim 9 wherein each package template further includes an affinity space subset description.
14. The method of claim 9 further comprising requiring a human to approve the generated package before offering the generated package for sale.
15. The method of claim 9 further including confirming availability of the generated package at a time of consumer selection thereof before completing a sales transaction.
16. The method of claim 9 wherein the offering step comprises offering the at least one generated package for sale via a web-based interface.
17. The method of claim 9 wherein the providing step comprises the step of a human creating the plurality of package templates, each package template describing a respective package of components.
18. The method of claim 9 , wherein storing the descriptions of available components and storing the plurality of package templates, comprises storing the available components and the travel package templates in the same database arrangement.