SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DELIVERING PROMOTIONS

BACKGROUND

The invention relates generally to a technique of delivering promotions to a consumer at a point of sale (PoS) and, more particularly, to a technique of enabling the retailers or merchandisers to provide personalized promotions and discounts to their consumers at the point of sale (PoS).

In a retail environment, a point of sale (PoS) system typically includes one or more PoS terminals at the checkout counter and a centrally located PoS controller or server. The transactions occur at PoS terminals and arc then communicated to the PoS controller for storage and processing. Each of the terminals has attached peripheral devices for recording transactions. The consumers generally check out after their purchase.

While traditional PoS systems were primarily intended for tracking and record keeping of sales, there is considerable interest in offering promotions and discounts to customers based on certain parameters such as sales volume. Such promotional schemes are expected to encourage sales and ultimately increase profits. Current techniques to offer promotional schemes at PoS terminals include operating group promotions or product promotions. Such group or product promotions are predetermined and stored in the memory of the PoS systems (in particular, networked PoS controllers). For example, all the group promotion programs are operated by use of standard gift coupons. These gift coupons are generated with general discounts and given to the consumers. This information is also hard-coded inside the POS system. Thus, when the consumer brings the coupon appropriate entries are made in the POS system to invoke those pre-entered discount details.

However, in the retail world, individual customized promotions are not in use. In other words, promotions/offers are not tailor made for each individual consumer. When individual promotions are floated, it is difficult and inefficient to generate individual gift coupons. Thus, these individual promotions are either stored in a common database or written on the transaction cards (store/credit cards) carried by

the consumers. However, the existing PoS software/hardware platform of the retailer needs to be modified to enable the consumer to avail these promotions at the PoS. Additionally, there is no technique to determine the promotions available to the consumer from his/her transaction card and to apply those promotions to the ongoing transactions. In short, it is difficult to float or operate personalized promotional schemes with the existing setup.

Tt is therefore desirable to provide an efficient and cost-effective technique for delivering personalized promotional offers to the consumer at the PoS without interfering with the existing PoS infrastructure and processes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Briefly, in accordance with one aspect of the technique, a system is provided for delivering promotions to a consumer. The system includes data acquisition circuitry configured to acquire a consumer identification data, a promotion data, and details of items being purchased. The system further includes a processor configured to determine one or more promotions available to the consumer from the promotion data, to compare the available promotions against items being purchased, and to apply the available promotions to the items being purchased based upon the comparison.

In accordance with another aspect of the technique, a point of sale (PoS) system is provided. The PoS system includes a PoS terminal configured to process consumer transactions through one or more peripheral devices. The PoS system further includes a promotion delivery subsystem configured to acquire a consumer identification data, a promotion data, and details of items being purchased, to determine one or more promotions available to the consumer from the promotion data, to compare the available promotions against items being purchased, and to apply the available promotions to the items being purchased based upon the comparison.

In accordance with a further aspect of the technique, a method is provided for delivering promotions to a consumer. The method provides for acquiring consumer

identification data, promotion data and details of items being purchased. The method also provides for determining one or more promotions available to the consumer from the promotion data, comparing the available promotions against items being purchased, and applying the available promotions to the items being purchased based upon the comparison. Systems and computer programs that afford such functionality may be provided by the present technique.

DRAWINGS

These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood when the following detailed description is read with reference to the accompanying drawings in which like characters represent like parts throughout the drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic of a system for delivering promotions or offers to the consumers in accordance with aspects of the present technique;

FIG. 2 is a schematic of a general-purpose computer system adapted to act as different components of the system of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a schematic of a PoS system for delivering promotions or offers to the consumers in accordance with one aspect of the present technique; and

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary business process for delivering promotions or offers to the consumer in accordance with aspects of the present technique.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present techniques are generally directed to providing or delivering marketing and/or promotional offers to consumers at the point of sale (PoS). Such promotion and delivery techniques may be useful in a variety of contexts, such as retail outlets, banking companies, airlines industries, hotel industries, and others. Though the present discussion provides examples in context of retail outlets, one of ordinaiy skill in the art will readily apprehend that the application of these techniques in other

contexts, such as for airlines, hotel industries or banking companies, is well within the scope of the invention.

Referring now to FIG. 1 , a schematic diagram of an exemplary system 10 for delivering promotions or offers to the consumers is illustrated in accordance with aspects of the present technique. The system J 0 includes one or more transaction terminals 12 for processing consumer transactions. Each of the transaction terminals 12 includes one or more peripheral devices for recording transactions, generating and printing bill, identifying consumer, and so forth. The system 10 further includes promotion delivery subsystem 14 for accessing, acquiring, or generating personalized promotions for the consumer and applying the promotions to the ongoing transaction in accordance with aspects of the present technique. The transaction terminals 12 and the promotion delivery subsystem 14 may be communicatively coupled to each other via a secured communication channel 16. Additionally, the transaction terminals 12 may be in communication with a transaction server (not shown) via a secured communication channel. It should be noted that the transaction terminal 12 may be a PoS terminal, a kiosk, a portable device, an ATM, or a computer terminal. The transaction server may be a PoS controller, a transaction bank server, or a merchant server. The secured communication channel 16 may be a wired or a wireless communication network such as Internet, local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), transaction network and so forth. Alternatively, the secured communication channel 16 may include a data pathway (e.g., data transfer buses of the transaction terminal) such as a serial bus, a parallel bus, a PCI (peripheral component interconnect) bus, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the data pathway may also include data cables connecting one or more peripheral devices and the transaction terminal 12 such as RS232 cable, USB cable and so forth.

The promotion delivery subsystem 14 may be a processing device (e.g., a computer, a server, a microcontroller, and so forth) communicatively coupled to the secured communication channel. For example, the promotion delivery subsystem 14 may be a microcontroller communicatively coupled to the data pathway (e.g., PCI bus, RS232 cable). The promotion delivery subsystem 14 monitors data traffic on the

communication channel 16, acquires the data traversing over the communication channel 16 upon detecting the data traffic, and processes the data to generate and/or extract promotions, compare the promotions against items being purchased, apply the promotions to ongoing transaction, and so forth. The transmission of information between the transaction terminal 12, the promotion subsystem 14 and/or the transaction server may be in real time. It should be noted that the transaction server may store the consumer identification details along with the associated transactions in a transaction database for record keeping and other purposes. Similarly, the promotion delivery subsystem 14 may host a promotion database where the consumer identification details along with one or more promotions offered to or availed by the respective consumer may be stored for record keeping and other purposes.

FIG. 2 illustrates a schematic diagram of a general-purpose computer system 18. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the computer 18 may be adapted to function as the transaction terminal 12 or the promotional subsystem 14. The computer 18 may generally include a processor 20, a memory 22, and input/output devices 24 (also referred as peripheral devices) connected via a data pathway (e.g., buses, cables and so forth) 26. The processor 20 accepts instructions and data from the memory 22 and performs various data processing functions of the computer 18. These data processing functions may include dynamically generating one or more promotions at the promotion delivery subsystem end, extracting one or more promotions from a promotional data acquired by the promotion delivery subsystem 14 from a memory or a transaction card of the consumer, comparing the promotions against items being purchased, analyzing consumer behavior via an analytics engine at promotion subsystem end, executing instructions, and so forth as will be discussed further below. The processor 20 includes an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) that performs arithmetic and logical operations, and a control unit that extracts instructions from memory 22 and decodes and executes them, calling on the ALU when necessary.

The memory 22 stores a variety of data computed by the various data processing functions of the computer 18 or received from the input/output devices 24. The data may include, for example, transaction card data, transaction data, promotional data related to the consumer, and so forth. The memory 22 generally includes a random- access memoiy (RAM) and a read-only memory (ROM); however, there may be other types of memory such as programmable read-only memoiy (PROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) and electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). Also, the memoiy preferably contains an operating system, which executes on the processor 20. The operating system performs basic tasks that include recognizing input, sending output to output devices, keeping track of files and directories and controlling various peripheral devices. The information in the memoiy 22 might be conveyed to a human user through the input/output devices 24, the data pathway 26, or in some other suitable manner.

The input/output devices 24 may include a keyboard 28 and a mouse 30 that enables a user to enter data and instructions into the computer 18. Additionally, the input/output devices 24 may include a display device 32 that enables the user to view the available information and a printer 34 that enables the user to print any data for his reference. Further, the input/output devices 24 enable the transaction terminal 12 and/or the promotion delivery subsystem 14 to acquire consumer identification, promotion and/or transaction data of the consumer. In particular, the input/output device 24 may include a card read/write device 36 configured to read information from a transaction card and to write information on the transaction card when the transaction card is swiped or presented to the terminal 12, The input/output devices 24 at the terminal 12 may further include a barcode scanner 38 for scanning the barcode from the products or the coupons, thereby acquiring the information related to the products or the coupons.

The computer 18 may further include a communication port 40 such as a telephone, cable or wireless modem; a network card such as an Ethernet adapter, local area network (LAN) adapter, integrated services digital network (ISDN) adapter, or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) adapter; a USB port; IEEE 1394 port; and so forth,

that enables the computer 18 to access other computers and resources on the communication network 42. In particular, in certain embodiments, the communication port 40 enables the transaction terminal 12 and the promotion delivery subsystem 14 to access each other over the communication network 42.

The computer 18 may also include data acquisition circuitry 44 for acquiring data traversing over the communication channel (communication network 42 and/or the data pathway 26). As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the data acquisition circuitry 44 may employ any packet sniffing technologies to acquire the data being transferred over the communication channel. Jn one embodiment, sniffer cards may be employed based on the communication channel to which the data acquisition circuitry is plugged (e.g., PCI sniffer card on the PCT bus of the PoS terminal). In particular, the promotion delivery subsystem 14 is configured to acquire consumer identification data, promotion data and/or transaction data traversing over the communication channel through the data acquisition circuitry 44. Additionally, the data acquisition circuitry may be configured to constantly monitor data traffic over the communication channel. Thus, the data acquisition circuitry 44 acquires data packets containing consumer identification, promotions, and/or transaction details upon detecting the data traffic on the communication channel. Moreover, in certain embodiments, the promotion delivery subsystem H may receive data from the one or more peripheral devices and relay it to the transaction terminal 12. It should be noted that such relaying is a type of data sniffing as discussed above. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the acquisition of data packets is carried out without interfering with normal legacy PoS operation.

The computer 18 may also include a mass storage device 46 to allow the computer 18 to retain large amounts of data permanently. The mass storage device 46 may include all types of disk drives such as floppy disks, hard disks and optical disks, as well as tape drives that can read and write data onto a tape that could include digital audio tapes (DAT), digital linear tapes (DLT), or other magnetically coded media. The above-described computer 18 may take the form of a hand-held digital

computer, personal digital assistant computer, notebook computer, personal computer, workstation, mini-computer, mainframe computer or supercomputer.

FlG. 3 illustrates a schematic diagram of a PoS system 48 for delivering promotions or offers to the consumers in accordance with aspects of the present technique. The PoS system 48 includes a PoS terminal 50 and a promotion delivery subsystem 52 such as those described above for enabling the retailers or merchandisers to provide personalized promotions and discounts to their consumers at the point of sale (PoS). The PoS terminal 50 is adapted to process consumer transactions through one or more peripheral devices. The transaction data (comprising information related to products purchased, number of quantity purchased for each product, cost per piece, and so forth) may be entered into the PoS terminal 50 through various peripheral devices. For example, the PoS terminal may include or may be coupled to the barcode scanner 54, which scans barcodes from different product being purchased and presented to the scanner. Additionally, the transaction data along with the consumer identification data may be transmitted from the PoS terminal 50 to a PoS controller (not shown) over a communication channel. As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the PoS controller may receive the consumer identification data and the transaction data from the PoS terminal 50 and capture details of a consumer along with details of the transaction performed by the respective consumer in a transaction database.

The promotion delivery subsystem 52 is communicatively coupled to the PoS terminal 50 and may be generally placed along with the PoS terminal 50. As noted above, the promotion delivery subsystem 52 may include a processor 56, a memory 58 and/or a data acquisition circuitry 60 among other components. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 and in particular, the data acquisition circuitry 60 is configured to acquire a consumer identification data, a promotion data, and/or transaction data (comprising details of items being purchased). For example, the data acquisition circuitry 60 may be communicatively coupled to a communication channel over which the data is being transmitted. As noted above, the data acquisition circuitry constantly monitors the PoS communication channel and

acquires the data traversing the PoS communication channel by employing any packet sniffing technologies. In one embodiment, the data acquisition circuitry may be hooked to a communication channel between the PoS terminal 50 and a peripheral device (e.g., barcode scanner 54) configured to acquire details of the items being purchased. The data acquisition circuitry 60 may then decipher the data transfer protocol and interpret the details of the acquired data (e.g., transaction in progress etc.) by employing the processor 56 or on its own.

In the illustrated embodiment, a barcode scanner 54 is employed by the PoS system 48 to acquire the details of the items being purchased. These scanned barcodes from the product are entered into the PoS terminal 50 as purchased items. The barcode scanner 54 may be coupled to the PoS terminal 50 via a data cable such as RS232 cable. The data cable may be split using any splitter such as RS232 splitter such that one of the split channel may be hooked to the PoS terminal 50 while the other may be connected to the promotion delivery subsystem 52, Thus, the promotion delivery subsystem 52 sniffs the information traversing from the barcode scanner 54 to the PoS terminal 50. Thus, the scanned barcodes also enter the promotion delivery subsystem 52.

Additionally, the promotion delivery subsystem 52 may be provided with a transaction card reader 62 (e.g., magnetic card reader) to read information from a transaction card carried by the consumer. The transaction card data (comprising consumer identification data and/or promotional data) embedded in the transaction card is read via the transaction card reader 62 upon presentation of the transaction card at the PoS terminal 50. The data acquisition circuitry 60 may therefore acquire the consumer identification data and/or promotion data from the transaction card. Alternatively, it should be noted that the consumer identification data may be entered into the PoS terminal 50 through other peripheral devices such as keyboard. The data acquisition circuitry 60 may acquire the fed consumer identification data from the PoS terminal 50. Moreover, the data acquisition circuitry 60 may access the memory 58 and acquire the promotional data for the respective consumer form a promotion database. As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the one or more

promotions may be uniquely encoded in a pre-specified format within the transaction card or in the memory.

As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the data acquisition may be carried out without interfering with normal legacy PoS operation. Thus, the promotion deiivery subsystem 52 obtains information related to the consumer (consumer identification and/or promotions available to the consumer) and the transaction details (product identification, transaction volume and so forth) without interfering with normal legacy PoS operation.

Further, in certain embodiments, the promotion delivery subsystem 52 and in particular, the processor 56 is configured to dynamically generate promotional offers for the consumers based on the consumer profile (consumer identification, consumer transaction history, past promotions offered or availed by the consumer, and so forth) and/or the transaction details of the ongoing transaction. It should be noted that some or all of the data required for the generation of the promotional offers may be acquired or sniffed. As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the generated promotions may be customized for each consumer based on consumer's behavior and interest. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 may access the transaction and/or promotion history of the consumer from a transaction and/or promotion database respectively to facilitate the generation of new promotions. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 may then perform analysis on each consumer's behavior based on his/her current and/or a past transaction and/or promotion data via an analytics engine to generate the one or more customized promotions. The analysis may be performed periodically or in real time. The generated and customized marketing and promotional offers for a specific consumer may be stored in the memory 58 in a promotion database for subsequent use or tallying. The data acquisition circuitry 60 can access these promotions along with various other marketing or promotional offers from the memory 58.

The promotion delivery subsystem 52 and in particular, the processor 56 may be further configured to determine or extract one or more promotions available to the consumer from the promotion data, compare the available promotions against items

being purchased, and apply the available promotions to the items being purchased based upon the comparison. The processor 56 may check if any of the items being purchased qualifies for the one or more promotions available to the consumer and identify a set of items from the list of items being purchased that qualifies for one or more of the available promotions. The processor 56 may then apply the one or more of the available promotions to the qualified items. It should be noted that the promotion delivery subsystem 52 may apply the one or more promotions to the ongoing transactions in a variety of ways. For example, in certain embodiments, the redeemable promotions may be printed via a printer 64 coupled to the promotion delivery subsystem 52. The details of the printed promotional offers may then be entered into the PoS terminal through the peripheral devices (e.g., barcode scanner or keyboard) to avail the discount. In one embodiment, discount coupons may be printed as barcode that may then be immediately scanned via the barcode scanner to avail the discount. Alternatively, the redeemable promotions may be directly applied to the qualified items by making an appropriate entry towards the ongoing transaction. This can be achieved by relaying the redeemable promotions to the PoS terminal 50 over the communication channel as a transaction entry for the ongoing transaction. Thus, the consumer can avail or redeem the available promotions at the point of sale.

In one illustrative example, a user (consumer or attendee at the point of sale) swipes the transaction card in the transaction card reader. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 receives the consumer identification details and/or promotion data from the transaction card. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 will then retrieve the promotions available to the consumer based on the promotion data obtained form the transaction card. Additionally, the promotion delivery subsystem 52 will start tracking the items being purchased by the consumer as the items are scanned via the barcode scanner or as the details of the items being purchased are entered at the PoS terminal. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 will then check if the items bought are eligible for promotions and generate a list of products for which the consumer is eligible for offers. The promotion delivery subsystem 52 will then apply the promotions to the items that qualify for promotions either by making an appropriate

entry directly into the ongoing transaction or by printing a discount coupons that can fed into the PoS application (scanning the barcodes of the discount coupon or entering the details of the discount coupons). For example, the consumer may be entitled to a 30% discount on product 'Y" if he buys product 'X'. The promotion delivery system will keep a track of the items being purchased and check if products 'X ^! and 'Y' are bought. If both the products are bought then the promotion delivery system will apply a discount of 30% on product 'X' either by making an appropriate entry into the PoS application or by printing a discount voucher worth 30% of the value of product 'X' that may then be availed at the PoS terminal.

As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the transaction card may include any card having a data storage medium. For example, the transaction card may include a magnetic stripe card, a RFlD card, an optical card, a contact or contactless smart card and so forth. These cards may be used as a debit card, a credit card, a PLCC card, a bank card, a loyalty card (for facilitating loyalty based promotions carried out by a specific retailer or promoter), reward card (for facilitating reward points based promotions generally carried out by a retailer or transaction bank), and so forth. It should be noted that the information such as promotional data may be written or embedded on one of the available read/write tracks of the magnetic stripe card. In one embodiment, the available read/write track may be track 2 and/or track 3 of the magnetic stripe card. The promotional data may include one or more promotions such as a discount coupon, a cash back offer, a product discount, a credit card APR discount, a reward point based promotion, a loyalty point based promotion and so forth. Additionally, the one or more promotions may include general information or offers related to product and services such as cross sell offers.

As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, a variety of techniques may be employed to deliver promotional or marketing offers to the consumers. In particular, as will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, control logic and/or automated routines for performing the techniques and steps described herein may be implemented by the system 10 and/or 48, either by hardware, software, or combinations of hardware and software. For example, suitable code may be

accessed and executed by the processor to perform some or ail of the techniques described herein. Similarly application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) configured to perform some or all of the techniques described herein may be included in the processor.

For example, referring now to FIG. 4, exemplary control logic 66 for delivering promotions or marketing offers to the consumer via promotion delivery systems, such as promotion delivery system 10 and PoS system 48, is depicted via a flowchart in accordance with aspects of the present technique. As illustrated in the flowchart, the control logic 66 includes the steps of acquiring consumer identification data, promotion data and transaction data at step 68. The transaction data may include the details of the items being purchased by the consumer. Further, it should be noted that, in certain embodiments, acquiring the promotional data may include the step of generating one or more promotions to be offered to the consumer based on the acquired consumer identification and/or transaction data. The control logic 66 further includes the steps of determining/extracting one or more promotions available to the consumer from the promotion data at step 70, comparing the available promotions against the items being purchased at step 72, and applying the available promotions to the items being purchased based upon the comparison at step 74. The control logic 66 may also include the step of monitoring data traffic over the communication channel so as to acquire consumer identification, promotion data and/or transaction data upon detecting the data traffic.

As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, comparing the available promotions against the items being purchased comprises identifying a set of items from the items being purchased that qualifies for one or more of the available promotions. The one or more available promotions may then be applied to the qualified items. Further, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, applying the available promotions to the items being purchased comprises printing the one or more promotions as a coupon via a printer and entering the details of the coupon via peripheral devices (e.g., barcode scanner, keyboard, etc.) along with the details of items being purchased. Alternatively, applying the available promotions to the items being

purchased comprises sending the one or more available promotions to the transaction terminal and making an appropriate entry towards an ongoing transaction.

As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the promotion delivery system and techniques described in various embodiments discussed above provide an efficient and cost-effective way of delivering various promotional or marketing offers to the consumer so as to increase the sales and revenue. For example, the availability of promotional offers at the time of processing a transaction will increase the probability of usage of these offers, thereby increasing the volume of transactions and sales revenue. Additionally, the ability to customize promotional offers for each user via the analytics system will increase the effectiveness of the promotions. The technique further allows a business entity (retailer) to provide personalized promotions and discounts to their consumers at the point of sale (PoS) on each and every consumer purchase. This will enhance the capability of business entities to provide the promotions in real time and at the point of sale. Moreover, the techniques enable the consumers to use their entitled offers at the point of sale resulting in increased effectiveness of the promotions.

Further, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the techniques as described in various embodiments discussed above may be easily integrated with a legacy PoS system, thereby allowing non-intrusive integration of promotion incentives and schemes into a legacy PoS system (conventional PoS system). This in part is enabled by employing passive packet sniffing technologies to acquire the cusumer identification, promotion, and/or transaction information. Further, the promotion delivery techniques can be easily deployed in the market using the invention irrespective of their current hardware or software platforms. The technique can also be later improved/modified without affecting the functionality of the PoS system. Thus, the technique provides real-time personalized promotions with minimal or no disruption to the existing infrastructure or process. Additionally, marketing and promotional offers can be in made electronic form, thereby reducing or eliminating the traditional and more expensive print based promotion techniques and wastage

associated with them. Moreover, promotional values can be netted against transaction values electronically and immediately.

While only certain features of the invention have been illustrated and described herein, many modifications and changes will occur to those skilled in the art. It is, therefore, to be understood that the appended claims arc intended to cover all such modifications and changes as fall within the true spirit of the invention.