FIELD OF INVENTION

The invention relates to a loyalty rewarding system. More particularly, the invention relates to a loyalty rewarding system for rewarding a plurality of consumer accounts and method thereof.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Loyalty incentive or reward programs are the common strategies used in marketing a business. Such programs are typically offered by sponsoring companies to promote the sales of their products or services, or to improve the performance of their employees. Shopping benefits such as discount are usually offered to the customers who sign-up for the loyalty program. Customers participating in such programs often receive credits that can be accumulated and exchanged for merchandise in award catalogues, or for travel awards.

Various consumer incentive programs have existed, including cash discounts, price cuts, cash or other currency-based giveaways, redeemable coupons, free merchandise or services, points-based programs such as frequent flyer programs, and so on. Such known incentive programs have suffered, however, from various disadvantages for consumers, merchants and the entities who redeem incentives. For example, purely paper-based coupons, stamps, or certificates become bulky and cumbersome to accumulate and use, and they can be easily misplaced.

Furthermore, consumer and redeemer handling of such incentives during purchasing transactions, including the need for manual recording into customer accounts, has been inconvenient and can slow sales transactions. Purely paper-based incentives have also typically only rewarded consumers for actual purchases, with no reward for simply referring a merchant’s place of business to a peer. Moreover, such programs typically fail to provide valuable demographic information about consumers or only gather demographic information at the time of redemption by manual recording.

On the other hand, certain consumer incentive programs have attempted to combine electronic or on-line features with familiar paper-based features, such as by providing printed coupons or certificates which have been chosen by a consumer online. These programs may ease a storage problem by only printing coupon as desired, but do not address the above-discussed problems with paper-based incentives for the merchant or redemption authority. In addition, such dispenser-generated incentives may not award the desired incentive unless a consumer specifically seeks out the incentive, thereby making it inefficient for a consumer too accumulate desired incentives and hampering overall access to incentives.

Therefore, there is a need of an on-line advertisement enhancement and rewards system where rewards are electronically displayed, rewarded, stored and redeemed without the shortcomings and disadvantages of existing programs. This invention provides such a system and method.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

The main objective of the invention is to provide a loyalty rewarding system comprising an account module for managing a plurality of accounts and a reward module for generating loyalty points upon a current purchase of goods and/or services.

Preferably, the linkage between a first account and an antecedent account is formed by the first account being created under the reference of the antecedent account and the antecedent account has made a purchase of the same goods and/or services prior to the current purchase.

Preferably, the reward module transforms the linkages between the accounts into a family tree and the reward module is configured to disburse a predetermined loyalty points to the first account and its antecedent account.

Preferably, the reward module further disburse a predetermined referral points to antecedent account in which the first account has made a purchase of the same goods and/or services being referred by its antecedent account.

Preferably, the loyalty points and the referral points of the accounts are accumulated and further converted into virtual credit or cash value.

Preferably, the system further includes a merchant module for managing a plurality of merchant accounts which provides a plurality of goods/services within the system.

Preferably, the system further includes further includes a forum module for allowing users of the accounts to discuss on the goods/services provided by the merchant accounts and further providing feedbacks.

One skilled in the art will readily appreciate that the invention is well adapted to carry out the objects and obtain the ends and advantages mentioned, as well as those inherent therein. The embodiments described herein are not intended as limitations on the scope of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For the purpose of facilitating an understanding of the invention, there is illustrated in the accompanying drawing the preferred embodiments from an inspection of which when considered in connection with the following description, the invention, its construction and operation and many of its advantages would be readily understood and appreciated.

Figure 1 is a flowchart illustrating the loyalty rewarding system.

Figure 2 is a flowchart illustrating the flow of the rewarding loyalty points to a member within the system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The invention will now be described in greater detail, by way of example, with reference to the drawings.

The present invention generally provides a system for rewarding a plurality of consumer accounts in a multi-level marketing plan. Throughout this disclosure, the terms“members” and“referral” may be used to denote an individual who participates in a loyalty rewards system of an online selling platform which markets and sells products and/or services provided by at least a merchant. The teachings of the present disclosure employ features of a unilevel tree structure and a binary tree structure for providing incentive and/or rewards for participants to recommend and recruit others into the platform to purchase products and/or services from the merchant. In some

In a preferred embodiment as shown in Fig. 1, the loyalty rewarding system comprises an account module 10 for managing a plurality of accounts and linkages between the different accounts and a reward module 20 generating loyalty points upon a current purchase of goods and/or services. The linkage between a first account and an antecedent account is formed by the first account being created under the reference of the antecedent account and the antecedent account has made a purchase of the same goods and/or services prior to the current purchase. Further, the reward module 20 transforms the linkages between the accounts into a family tree and the reward module is configured to disburse a predetermined loyalty points to the first account and its antecedent account. In some embodiment, the reward module 20 further disburse a predetermined referral points to an antecedent account in which the first account has made a further purchase of the same goods and/or services being referred by its antecedent account.

Preferably, the system is programmed and executed within a computing device for determining the amounts to distribute as reward points to particular account. The computing device may be any one of various devices including, for example, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a personal digital assistant, a cellular phone, a pager, a workstation, and the like. The computing device may also include an output component such as a display device, a speaker, and the like. Further, the computing device may include an input components such as a keyboard, a key pad, a mouse, a trackball, a touch screen, a barcode scanner, a light pen, a microphone, and the like.

In some embodiments, the computing device further includes a storage subsystem which stores the basic programming and data constructs that provide the functionality of the computer device. For example, the various modules implementing the functionality of the present invention may be stored in the storage subsystem of the computing device. Preferably, these software modules are generally executed by processor(s). Further, the storage subsystem also provides a repository for storing the various databases storing information according to the present invention. The storage subsystem typically comprises memory component and file storage component. Preferably, the memory component includes but not limit to a number of memories including a main random access memory (RAM) for storage of instructions and data during program execution and a read only memory (ROM) in which fixed instructions are stored. Whereas, the file storage component provides persistent (non-volatile) storage for program and data files, and may include a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive along with associated removable media, a Compact Digital Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) drive, an optical drive, removable media cartridges, and other like storage media.

In some embodiments, the computing device further includes a bus component for letting the various components and subsystems of computer system communicate with each other as intended. Examples of bus component may include Industry Standard Architecture (ISA), Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), Micro Channel Architecture (MCA), Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association (PCMCIA), Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) and the like.

In some embodiments, computer program code for carrying out operations of the present invention may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the“C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on a single computer, partly on a single computer as a stand-alone software package on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the single computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider). The computer usable program code may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, radio frequency, etc. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable medium, as described above, that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instruction which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specifies in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

Referring to Fig. 2, a member maybe sign up as an account by purchasing one or more goods or services within the system in step 100. Upon a successful purchase transaction 200, the system will proceed to calculate and assign a predetermined loyalty points to the member in step 300. The term“antecedent account” is now referred to a“referral account”. The system will first verified whether the member is performing a first time purchase within the system in step 301. For the first time purchase of the member, the system will search a referrer account 302 which matches the order 303 with the member for assigning the referral points to the matched referrer account 304. In another situation where the member perform a second purchase and there is none of the referrer account matches the other with the member, the system will disburse the loyalty point to the member 305 and disburse the referral point to the next parent referrer account 306, 307 respectively.

Further, the system further disburses a referral points 400 to a referrer 401 of the signed up member which matches the same purchase of goods and services with the member 402 to into the referrer account 403. When there is none of the referrer account matches the other with the signed up member 404, the system will disburse the referral point to the next parent referrer account 405. Moving on, the loyalty points and referral points of the account is accumulated in step 500 and further converted into virtual credit or cash value. Preferably, the system includes a merchant module 30 for providing a plurality of merchants to market a plurality of goods/services for the user to purchase within the system. In some embodiment, the system also includes a forum module 40 for allowing members of the accounts to discuss on the goods/services provided by the merchants and further providing feedbacks and/or rating towards the merchants.

The present disclosure includes as contained in the appended claims, as well as that of the foregoing description. Although this invention has been described in its preferred form with a degree of particularity, it is understood that the present disclosure of the preferred form has been made only by way of example and that numerous changes in the details of construction and the combination and arrangements of parts may be resorted to without departing from the scope of the invention.