WO2007126440A2

WO2007126440A2 - A method and system for distributing and redeeming targeted offers to customers

Info

Publication number: WO2007126440A2
Application number: PCT/US2006/061608
Authority: WO
Inventors: Gary Hawkins; Janusz Niemiec; Brown H. Carpenter
Original assignee: Solidus Networks, Inc. D/B/A Pay By Touch
Priority date: 2005-12-05
Filing date: 2006-12-05
Publication date: 2007-11-08
Also published as: WO2007126440A3

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided for activating and redeeming product discount offers targeted to particular customers. Information related to a merchant loyalty program such as t-logs, customer loyalty information, redemption history, customer segmentation data, and merchant product taxonomies are regularly transmitted to an incentive management system for storage. Merchants can then generate pools of offers and submit them to the incentive management system, which analyzes the characteristics of the offers and uses the information related to the merchant loyalty program to target the offers to specific customers most likely to redeem such offers.

Description

A Method and System For Distributing and Redeeming Targeted Offers To Customers

Claim of Priority

|G001] This application is a cσntinuation-in-part of U, S application 11/283,202 filed November 18, 200S and a corttinuation-in-part of U S. application 11/421458 filed May 31 , 2006. This application also claims priority benefit under 35 U, S C. § 119(e) from provisional application number 60/742,743 filed December 5, 2005. AIi of the foregoing applications are hereby incorporated by reference herein, m their entirety, for af! purposes.

Technical Field

[0002J The disclosed embodiments pertain to merchant ioyaity programs, and more specifically, to delivering and redeeming targeted offers to customers who have enrolled in such merchant ioyaity programs.

Background

[0003] Forces within the mass retail industry are creating increasing pressure on manufacturers, distributors/wholesalers, and retailers. A tremendous amount of consolidation has occurred and continues to occur in the industry at the retail level Competition has aiso led to an increase in channel blur, whereby retailers are selling products outside of their traditional channels in search of increased sales. Manufacturers and retailers alike have been hard hit by the eommoditization of branded goods and products

[0004] In addition to these forces internal to the industry, externa! pressures affect the marketing of goods throughout the supply chain. The cost of mass media advertising and marketing for manufacturers and retailers alike continues to increase significantly white providing less of a return. The increasing splintering of traditional mass media vehicles (i.e., going from three major television channels some years ago to hundreds today) means that the cost of reaching an equivalent audience size has substantially increased,

[0005J The advent of retail frequent shopper programs has provided the retail industry greater insight into customer shopping behavior It has been determined that 30% of customers generate approximately 75-80% of a retail company^'s annual sales with the bottom 30% of customers (when ranked by spending) generating !ess than 3% of annual sales. Many retail companies also have tremendous turnover occurring in their customer base, losing a great many shoppers each year. Furthermore, it has been commonly found that retailers' regular patrons actually subsidize deals and toss- creating offers for occasional, deal-seeking customers.

|0006] Concurrent with these developments in retail, a customer trend has moved to on-line shopping The internet has revolutionized customer buying habits, including opening a new portal that transcends geographic limitations and allows for purchasing 24 hours, 7 days a week. The online world provides retailers with access to millions of customers. With the ability to communicate freely to customers, retailers can easily target specific customers by sending them product-specific promotions, coupons, and the like. Howei/er. with the internet quickly growing as a preferred channel for customer purchasing, the on-line shopping arena misses out on opportunities tα compete with ioyalty-based reward or incentive programs as offered in stores. Furthermore, there is a gap between the on-line and offline market, thereby ailowing merchants to be effective either on-iine or in stores, but not both.

[0007J Accordingly, there is a need for a method that combines the benefits of physical and virtual commerce to identify and market to specific customers and customer groups. Additionally, there is a need for providing Soyaity programs that can be used either online or in stores.

Summary

[00Q8J The present disclosure teaches a method for redeeming targeted offers for a customer at a merchant location comprising obtaining a merchant ioyaity identifier such as a ioyafty number relating to the customer, locating in a database a set of persona! incentives {as further detailed below) targeted for the customer, transmitting data eiements relating to each persona! incentive in the set to a redemption controller located at the merchant location, receiving at the redemption controiier a product code relating to a product scanned at a merchant point of sale, determining at the redemption controller whether the product code matches any of the data eiements (e g., UPC code, discount price, etc.) for any persona! incentive in the set; and transmitting the discount information relating to the product to the merchant point of sate.

[0009] The present disclosure also teaches a method for activating targeted offers for a customer comprising obtaining a merchant ioyaity identifier reiating to the customer, locating in a database a set of personal incentives targeted for the customer, transmitting information (e.g., discount price, product description, etc) reiating to each personal incentive in the set to a Customer display, and marking the personal incentives in the set as activated

[0010] The present disclosure also teaches an incentive management system to the foregoing redemption and activation methods. Such an incentive management system may comprise a merchant loyalty program subcomponent for storing merchant information (e.g . customer loyalty information, transaction log (Nog) information, product taxonomies, customer segmentation data, etc.} relating to a merchant loyalty program, a communication stβgtng server for transmitting personal incentives to customers for activation and for transmitting personal incentives to a redemption controller at a merchant location to facilitate redemption by customers, a targeting engine for generating targeted offers of persona! incentives for customers based upon analysis of the characteristics of the personal incentives and the merchant information stored by the merchant loyalty program; and a targeted offers database for storing the targeted offers generated by the targeting engine.

Brief Description of the Drawings [0011] The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and form a part of the specification, illustrate various embodiments and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the various embodiments

{0012| Figure 1 depicts an exemplary biometricaiiy enhanced infrastructure architecture in which an incentive management system may be utilized.

{0013J Figure 2 depicts an exemplary component architecture for an incentive management system,

|0014] Figure 3 depicts a flow chart for activating targeted offers through the incentive management system.

[0015J Figure 4 depicts a flow chart for redemption of targeted offers through the incentive management system of the present invention,

Detaϋed Description

[0016| Various embodiments of the invention are discussed in detail below. White specific implementations are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustration purposes only. A person with ordinary skill in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations can be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

[0017] The present disclosure relates to a system and method for electronically distributing and redeeming product coupons and other types of product offers for targeted customers ("persoπai incentives"}. For example, a persona! incentive may be a advertisement, coupon or offer presented to a customer by a retail merchant or a manufacturer (such manufacturer also known as a "CPG^'' or a "Consumer Packaged Goods" in certain industries) for a discount off the regular price of the product. Such a persoπai incentive may have certain associated rules and restrictions, including a limit per customer, a maximum number distributable to ail customers, and a customer segment profile which customers must satisfy to be offered such personal incentive (e.g., spend level of a customer, frequency of visits of a customer, etc.). Enrollment with an incentive management system as further described herein enables a customer to receive such persona! incentives through various distribution channels and redeem such personal incentives electronically at a merchant's "bnck and mortar"^' location and/or virtual point of sale.

infrastructure Architecture

[0018] Figure 1 depicts one embodiment of a biometπcaliy enhanced infrastructure architecture for activating and redeeming persona! incentives and conducting biometric payment transactions at a merchant location in which the present invention may be deployed A merchant^'s point of sale ("POS' ) 105 may include an electronic cash register ("ECR") 110 that is coupled to a PIN pad 115 which is further eαupied to a biometrie access point {"BAP") 120. in addition to providing a biometric scanner, the BAP 120 may also contain a processor, memory and software m order to control biometric image capture at the biometric scanner as well as drive or respond to communication from the PIN pad 115 or the incentive management system 1S5 ("IMS") (as further detailed below). The ECR 110 may be further coupled to other peripheral devices such as a printer or check reader that provides further POS functionality. Both the ECR 110 and the 3AP 120 (and the other BAP and ECRs for other POS stations if the merchant has multiple check-out ianes, such as in a supermarket) may be further couptecf through a hub 130 to the merchant's specific store controller 135 and a incentive redemption cαntrøiier 140 (as further described in conjunction with Figure 4). The ECR 110 may be configured or customized to communicate with the incentive redemption controller 140 as further described during the redemption process in Ptgure 4, The hub 130 may be further coupled to the merchant^'s cross-store corporate-wide network server 145 The corporate-wide network server 145 may be further coupled to a router ISO which may be further coupled to payment processing services for credit or debit card transactions 155 or for Automated Clearing House ("ACH") checking transactions 160. The corporate-wide network server 14S may also be further coupled to the iMS 165, A bsometricafiy accessible loyalty kiosk 1T0 may also be placed at the merchant to provide customers the opportunity to view and activate their persona! incentives prior to initiating their shopping experience Such a loyalty kiosk 170 may aiso be coupled, via the hub 130 and router 150, ultimately to the IMS 165, which as further described in Figure 2, may contain a database of persona) incentives that may be presented to the customer for viewing and "activation" at the loyalty Kiosk 170,

[0019] Those of ordinary skill in the art wit) recognize that the various communication channels and computer systems depicted rπ Figure 1 may be implemented in a variety of known techniques and manners. For example, while the loyalty kiosk 170 is illustrated as being coupled to the merchant's in store network hub 130, in certain embodiments, the loyalty kiosk 170 may posses its own direct communication channel to the IMS 165 that is separate from the merchant network. With respect to network connections, rather than using dedicated TCP/IP connections between the corporate-wide network server 145 and the MS 165 and other payment processors 1S5 and 160_L Internet connections may be considered in alternative embodiments. Similarly, rather than having the BAP 120 communicate with the !MS 165 through a wired network, alternative embodiments may utilize a wireless network system for communication between the BAP 120 and the IiVIS 165, Similarly, if the merchant's m-store computer network supports wireless networking technology, the ECR 110 may communicate with the store controller 135 wireiessly. As those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize, the communication among the merchant's POS 105, the in-store controller 135. the incentive redemption controller 140, the merchant's corporate-wide network server 145, various payment processing servers 155 and 160 and the IMS 165 may be implemented through a variety of private or proprietary networked connections or through the Internet or other publicly accessible networks, Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that the control logic and data stored and used by the various computer systems as described above is merely illustrative and may be distributed throughout the various computer systems^" logic controls and databases in alternative but functionary equivalent designs, including without limitation, the removal of certain systems and addition of other systems, without departing from the scope or spirit of the described embodiments. For example, a biometric scanner device (without the additional processing, memory and software capabilities of a BAP 120) may be coupled directly to the ECR 110 and the logic for communication between the biometric scanner device and the IMS 165 may be managed by the addition of another sewer coupled to the store controller 135 in the back of the merchant's location. An alternative embodiment, for example, for a smaller merchant or business, may not utilize a store controller 135 or hsve a corporate-wide network server 145.

iϊtøS Architecture

[0020] Figure 2 depicts &n exemplary component architecture for an IMS 1S5 capable of generating persona! incentives and electronically communicating these personal incentives to customers, and enabling electronic redemption of these personal incentives at points of redemption such as the merchant POS 105, The MS 1βS includes a merchant ioyalty program subcomponent 200 which manages data provided by the merchant to the SMS 165. For each merchant coupled to the !MS 16S (as identified through a merchant identifier}, the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 maintains the merchant's customer information in customer information database 205 Such customer information may include demographic information (name, address, etc.5 as well as the customer's merchant ioyalty identification number. Similarly, the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 may also maintain a merchant transaction iogs database 210 that receives and keeps track of all the i-iogs generated by the merchant, a product taxonomy database 215 that provides product related codes, product names, unit pπce, relationships among the various products, etc. for the merchant's inventory, and customer segmentation database 220 that provides spending level information for each of the merchant's customers as identified by their merchant loyalty identification numbers The foregoing databases are kept up-to-date by regular file transmission updates from the merchant's own systems, for example, on a daily or weekly batch basis, depending upon the embodiment. The merchant ioyalty program subcomponent 200 also maintains an offer database 225 that maintains and organizes personal incentives as created by the merchants. For example, while not depicted in Figure 2. MS 185 may provide a web interface to the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 for merchant employees to manually create and store into offer database 225 personal incentives and pooi them, if desired, into sets with common characteristics (e g , effective date, expiration date, publication date, etc ) (an "offer pool" of persona! incentives), As previously discussed, a persona! incentive may be a coupon or offer for a discount off the regular price of a product. Such a persona! incentive may have certain rules and restrictions associated therewith, including a limit per customer, a maximum number distributable to all customers, and a customer segment profile (e.g.. spend level of a customer, frequency of visits of a customer, etc ) which customers must satisfy to be offered such personal incentive. Additionally, each personal incentive may have a 'targeting strategy" associated with it. A particular targeting strategy typically defines a particular "reference group" of products against which tne customer's prior purchasing behavior may be analyzed to assess the interest of such a customer in particular personal incentive. Generally, if the customer rarely purchases any of the products in the reference group, he is assumed to have a Sow interest in the product related to the persona! incentive If the customer is a frequent purchaser of products in the reference group, he is assumed to have a high interest in the personal incentive. The creation of reference groups of products may be a manual merchant process given the need for the merchant^'s understanding of its own business and customers. When the merchant creates a personal incentive for a product through the web interface of the IMS 165. the merchant may also select a particular target strategy to assign to the persona! incentive. For example, a "reward" strategy may simply utilize the product that is the subject of the personal incentive itself as the reference group (i.e.. a customer s prior purchase of a product is a good indicator that he may be interested in purchasing the product in the future); a "category" strategy defines its reference group as all products that are in the same product taxonomy as the product that is the subject of the personal incentive (i.e. , if a customer has purchased a product in the same product taxonomy as that of the product of the personal incentive, he may likely have some interest in the persona! incentive as well); and an "upseli" strategy may define its reference group as products in the same taxonomy that have a lower price than the price of the product that is the subject of the personal incentive (i.e , customers may purchase a more expensive but simϋar product if it is discounted through a personal incentive;.

100213 A merchant data server 230 may be coupled to each of the customer information database 205. merchant transaction iogs database 210, product taxonomy database 215, customer segmentation database 220 and offer database 225 and may serve as a management gateway (e.g , in order to properly segregate data received from different merchants) for merchant systems that transmit merchant- related data to the various databases of merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 as weii as for other components of the IMS 165 that may request or otherwise receive information from the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200. In one embodiment, on a scheduled basis {e.g., daily for some databases, weekly or longer for other databases), the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200. through the merchant data server 230 may transmit updated customer information. Hogs, product taxonomies, and customer segmentation information to a targeting engine data warehouse 235 that ss coupled to a targeting engine 240. A merchant employee, may then, for example, through the merchant's web interface initiate the transmission of a created offer pool to the target engine. !n alternative embodiments, an offer poo! may have a defined targeting date on which the merchant data server 235 automatically transmits the offer poo! to the targeting engine 240.

|0022| The targeting engine 240 conducts a matchmaking process between the personal incentives in the offer pool and the merchant's customers Upon receiving the offer pool for targeting from the merchant data server 230, the targeting engine 240 extracts the particular merchant's

-o- information {e.g., offers, Hogs, product taxonomies, customer information, customer segmentation information, etc,} that is stored in the targeting engine data warehouse 235 and referenced, for example, by a merchant identifier. For each personal incentive in the offer pool, the targeting engine 240 may then calculate the relevance score for each merchant customer based, in part, upon the customer's and other customers' purchasing behavior as indicated through the Hogs and other merchant information from the targeting engine data warehouse 235, assign rankings of the offers to the merchant's customers based on such relevance scores, and allocate the persona! incentives to selected customers who have the highest chance of redeeming such personal incentives. One example of a methodology for caicuiating such reievance scores and assigning personal incentives to customers is set forth in U S, patent application 10/616,488 filed July S, 2003 which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Once the targeting engine 240 has targeted the personal incentives to merchant customers, the targeting engine 240 transmits such persona! incentive-customer associations (hereinafter, the "targeted offers") to the targeted offers server 24S which stores them in the customer targeted offers database 250. Such targeted offers are then ready to be extracted from the customer targeted offer database 250 when requested by the communication staging server 255 ^through targeted offers server 245) when "activated" by a customer at a merchant ioyalty kiosk 170 and when redeemed by the customer at a merchant POS 105 as further detailed below.

[0023] Certain embodiments of the IMS 165 may further contain a device registration database 260 that is coupled to the communication staging server 255 and contains customers^' mobile device identifiers (obtained during a customer enrollment process), such as a ceil phone number, in the event that the customer chooses to activate targeted offers through his mobile device Such device registration database 260 may associate a customer's mobile device identifier with a customer identifier such as the customer^'s merchant ioyalty identification number or other internal customer identifier which would enable the targeted offers server 24S to extract the appropriate targeted offers for the customer in the customer targeted offer database 260 for transmission to the customer's mobile device for viewing and activation.

|0024] An exemplary embodiment of an !MS 165 may be further capable of authorizing a customer biometricaliy for a payment transaction at the merchant POS 105. Such embodiments of the MS 165 may include an electronic wallet server 26S that provides access to customer's electronic wallets stored in the electronic waiiet database 270 and a bϊometric authentication server 275 that provides access to a customer's registered biometric samples stored in biometric database 280. The electronic waiiet server 265 and a biometric authentication server 275 enable a customer at a merchant POS 105 to utifize the BAP 120 to submit a biometric sample in order to retrieve payment information from the customer's electronic wallet stored at the MS 165 to provide for the payment terminal 115 to process the payment at the merchant POS 105 and ultimately send to a payment processor such as 155 or 150. Exemplary embodiments of biometric payment systems are described in U.S. application 11/421 ,451 , filed May 31 , 2006. which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. [0025] Those of ordinary skiiϊ in the art wiii recognize that the logical components and databases described in MS 165 of Figure 2 are merely illustrative and may be distributed in alternative but functionally equivalent designs, including without limitation, the removal of certain components and addition of others, without departing from the scope or spirit of the described embodiments. For example, rather than having a separate biometric authentication server 27$, communication staging server 255, electronic waϋet server 265. and targeted offers server 245, certain embodiments may integrate such functional capabiiities (or any portion thereof) Into a single communication staging server 255. In other embodiments, product information such as product related codes, product name, unit price, etc. may be provided separately from the product taxonomy such that there may exist a separate master product file or database that contains the foregotng product attributes in addition to the product taxonomy database 215. Such embodiments provide flexibility for the merchant when choosing to provide sensitive merchant information to the IMS 165. Similarly, merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 may exist and be managed by a third party entity different from the IMS 165 in some embodiments in addition to supporting the generation, targeting and redemption of merchant based personal incentives, certain embodiments of an IMS 165 may also provide the manufacturers of products themselves (i.e., the CPGs 185) the capability of creating personal incentives and offer pools to be targeted to customers through the iMS 165. For example, similar to that provided to merchant employees, the !MS 165 may make a web interface available to CPG employees to create personal incentives and offer pools to submit to the target engine 240 and ultimately to the customer targeted offer database 250 as targeted offers.

Enrollment in Merchant Loyaity Program

[0026] In an embodiment of the present invention, a customer may enroll in a merchant's loyalty program at a merchant location by providing personal information (such as name, address and phone number) to the IMS 165 (e.g., through the ioyaity kiosk 170 or at the merchant^'s customer server desk) in order to obtain a merchant ioyaity card containing a merchant loyalty identification number that can be used at the payment terminal 115 and/or ECR 110 at the merchant POS 105 during checkout Such merchant loyalty identification number and personal information are stored in the customer information database 205 of the merchant ioyaity program subcomponent 200 of the IMS 185. Additionally or alternatively, further personal information may be submitted to the SMS 165 by the customer in order to create an electronic waϋet to facilitate the purchasing of goods through biometπc authentication at the merchant POS 105 Such further persona! information may include, in addition to the merchant ioyaity Identification number, additional demographic information (e g., name, age, gender, date of birth, address), verification information fe g.. biometric data, a password, a security question and answer pair), financial account information (e.g , credit account data, debit account data, checking account data). persona! preferences (e.g.. desired persona! incentives distribution channeis, defauit payment type. notifications of new personal incentives, etc.), , healthcare information (e.g.. policy number, insurance carrier, etc.), and any other persona! and identity-related information. Such persona! information (including the merchant loyalty identification number} may be stored in the electronic wallet database 270. The customer may additionally register identifying information for one or more persona? devices, such as a mobile device, with the SMS 16S to view and activate his targeted offers through such personal devices. As previously discussed and depicted in Figure 2. mobile identifying information such as the mobile device^'s phone number is stored in the device registration database 260 and is associated with a customer identifier such as the customer's merchant loyalty identification number, so that customer's targeted offers may be identified In the customer targeted offers database 250 and transmitted to the mobile device.

Activation of Targeted Offers

[0027] Figure 3 depicts a flow chart for customer activation of targeted offers. As previously discussed in the context of Figure 2. the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200 regularly and continually feeds relevant data to the target engine data warehouse 235 and merchants regularly generate offer pools (e.g., through a web interface, etc.) that are transmitted to the targeting engine 240 in order to create targeted offers that are stored in the customer targeted offers database 2SO awaiting "activation" by a customer. A customer may then activate his own targeted offers at any time by viewing the targeted offers through a variety of ChBnDeSs₁ such as through emails, vta web browsing, by receiving messages at his registered mobile device and/or by visiting a merchant kiosk such as loyalty kiosk 170. In one bιomεtricai>y enhanced embodiment, at step 300, prior to initiating his shopping experience, a customer may visit the loyalty kiosk 170, which may be conveniently situated near the entrance of the merchant, and biometrically authenticate himself at the kiosk in order to view targeted offers associated with the customer^'s merchant specific ioyaity identification number The customer may piece his finger on the biometric scanner on the loyalty kiosk 170 which then captures and produces a representation of the image of the customer^'s fingerprint. Additionally, the customer may also enter a personal number into the ioyaity kiosk 170 to provide further information to the loyalty kiosk 170 in order to identify or verify the customer. At step 305. the ioyaity kiosk 170 may transmit to the biometric authentication server 275 of the IMS 165 the customer^'s biometric information captured at step 300 ^as weii as a personal number of the customer, if entered by the customer) snύ request confirmation of the customers identity by the IMS 1β5. At step 310, the biometric authentication server 275 receives the customer's biometnc information (and personal number) and interacts with the biometric database 280 using known methods of comparing biometric information (and utilizing personal numbers) to confirm a successful biometric comparison and obtain a customer identifier (e g., user identification number used internally in the IMS 165, etc.). In genera!, biometnc comparisons are successful sf the data sets of the compared biometric- samples are sufficiently similar (i.e., they need not be identical) Far example, once the biometric authentication server 275 compares the received biometric data with stored biometric data, it can generate a result score indicative of the similarity of the data sets. If the result score meets the required matching threshold, the comparison can be considered successful. [0028] At step 315. upon such biometric confirmation, the biometric authentication server 275 may receive the customer identifier from the authentication server 275 and forward it to the electronic waiiet server 26S which then extracts the appropriate electronic waiiet associated with the customer identifier from the electronic wallet database 270 and transmits it back to the biometric authentication server 275 At step 320, the biometric authentication server 275 may extract from the electronic waiiet the customer's loyalty identification number specifically related to the merchant, forward the loyalty identification number to the communication staging server 255 which then transmits it to the targeted offers server 245 sn order to obtain the customer's targeted offers. At step 325, the targeted offers server 245 queries the customer targeted offers database 250. obtains the customer's targeted offers, and transmits them back to the communication staging server 255, At step 33O₁ the communication staging server 255 may mark the received customer's targeted offers as "activated" and ready to be consumed by the customer and transmits them to the Ioyaity ktosk 170. At step 335, the loyalty kiosk 170 may present the offers to the customer for viewing and may further print the set of offers for the customer to take with him during his shopping experience. In step 340, the customer may then proceed to shop at the merchant with his offers in hand Those With ordinary skill in the art will recognize that alternative process flows may be implemented that do not depart from the spirit and scope of the foregoing disclosure. For example, at step 320, the biometric authentication server 275 may forward the customer loyalty identification number or the electronic waiiet itself back to the loyalty kiosk 170 which itself forwards the customer loyalty identification number (and if needed, extracts it from the electronic wallet) to the communication staging server 255. As previously discussed, those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that certain embodiments may even integrate the functionality of the biometric authentication server 275 and the communication staging server 255 into a single consoiidated communication staging server. Those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that in alternative embodiments, for example, the loyalty kiosk 170 may not be biometricalty enabled but may present the offers to the customer if the customer enters hss ioyaity identification number, phone number or swipes his ioyaity card or other identification card through a card reader coupled to the loyalty kiosk 170 in such scenarios, the customer^'s merchant ioyaity identification number may be directly transmitted to the communication staging server 255 by the loyalty kiosk 170 such that the communication staging server 2S5 is able to forward such merchant ioyaity identification number directly to the targeted offers server 245 to obtain the customer's targeted offers thereby bypassing the step of extracting such loyalty identification number from a retrieved electronic wallet as in steps 310 through to 320.

[0029] As previously discussed, customers may also activate their targeted merchant offers through other channels without using the ioyaity kiosk 170 prior to visiting the merchant's store. For example, a customer may utilize his mobile device to initiate a communication session with the IMS 1S5 to retrieve his targeted offers, in such a scenario, communication staging server 255 may aiso include a mobile gateway to receive the mobile device's communication initiation request and identify the cellular number of the mobile devtce (e.g., through caller identification or text messaging identification

-1C techniques). The communication staging server 255 may then query the device registration database 2SQ to obtain a customer identifier related to the customer's registered mobile device. Once the communication staging server 255 obtains such a customer identifier, it is able to forward such an identifier to the electronic waliet server 265 to request the customer's electronic waliet from the electronic waϋet database 270 and ultimately obtain the customer's loyalty identification numbers for any or all desired merchants. Simiiar to step 325, the communication staging server 255 is then able to obtain the customer's targeted offers through the targeted offers server 245 and forward such targeted offers to the mobile device for viewing and activation (e.g., through a URL sent via a text message, that can be viewed by the mobile device^'s web browser or through a custom client viewing application residing on the mobile device), in an alternative embodiment, a customer may log into a merchant's website by various alternative login methods (e.g. , usemame and password, merchant loyalty identification number_, biometricaliy, etc.) After obtaining the merchant loyalty identification number of the customer (e.g. , either stored and accessible by merchant^'s web server after a customer login or by directly requesting the number after customer login), the merchant's web server may communicate with the communication staging server 255 in order to present the customer's targeted offers to the customer through the Internet. Alternative internet channels may also be envisioned, including, without limitation, having customers access a merchant's targeted offers through an identity management web porta! offered by the !MS 16S Additionally, the availability of offers may also be communicated to customers through other distribution channels such as email that, for example, may include an activation link that, when clicked, may open a new web page providing a view of the offers to the customer. Once a customer has viewed his offers, the communication staging server 25S may mark the offers as activated.

Targeted Offer Redemption

[0030] As further detailed in Figure 4, at step 400, when a customer desires to complete a purchase of goods at the merchant, the customer places his Finger on the 8AP 120 which then captures and produces a representation of the image of the customer's fingerprint. Additionally, the customer may also enter a persona! number Into the PIN pad 115 to provide further information m order to identify or verify the customer At step 405, the BAP 120 may transmit the customer's faiometric information captured at step 400 (as well as a personal number of the customer, if entered by the customer) to the IMS 165 and request that the MS 185 authenticate the customer with the customer's biometric information (and personal number). If in steps 410 through 425, similar to steps 310 to 325 dursng the activation of targeted offers, the biometπc authentication server 275 of the !MS 165 is abie to authenticate the customer such that the communication staging server 255 obtains the customer's targeted offers that have been activated through the process set forth in Figure 3, then in step 430. the customer staging server 2S5 may export the activated targeted offers to the incentive redemption controller 140 located at the merchant In step 435, the biometric authentication server 275 may return a representation of the customer's electronic wallet that includes the customer's toyalty identification information and payment information (e.g., credit cards, debit cards, checking account, etc ) to the 8AP 120. At step 440, the BAP 120 may extract the customer's loyalty information and payment information from the customer's electronic wallet and transmit such information to the PIN pad 115. At step 445, the PlN pad 115 may forward the payment information and loyalty information to the ECR 110 At step 45O₁ when the merchant employee scans a product into the ECR 11O₁ the ECR 110 may transmit the customer's loyalty information (e g., loyalty identification number) and product information (e.g., UPC code) to the incentive redemption controller 140 which then determines whether such a product is eiigibϊe for a discount under the customers activated targeted offers. If, at step 455, the incentive redemption controller 140 identifies that a product is eligible for a discount, it transmits the discount information to ECR 110 for deduction off the price charged to the customer In certain embodiments, customer redemptions of activated target offers are tracked by the incentive redemption controller 140 and transmitted back to the SMS 165 for storage in the merchant ioyaity program subcomponent 200 and subsequent use for improved targeting by the targeting engine 240 and/or to provide reports to the merchant In one embodiment wherein CPG activated offers are redeemed by the customer at the merchant POS 105 as described in the foregoing process, a report of such CPG redemptions may be generated by the !MS 185 and transmitted to the merchant for use during settlement of funds between the merchant and the CPG. Ultimately, payment information received by the ECR in step 445 is transmitted to a payment processor such as 155 and 160 for fina! payment authorization.

[0031] Those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that alternative process flows may be implemented that do not depart from the spirit and scope of the foregoing disclosure. For example, rather than transmitting the targeted offers to the incentive redemption server 140 at step 430, an alternative embodiment may transmit the targeted offers to the incentive redemption server 140 at step 33D in Figure 3 during the activation process Additionally, alternative embodiments of redeeming activated targeted offers at merchant locations may not necessarily utilize a biometricaily enhanced merchant POS 105 as depicted in Figure 1. For example, those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that a customer may slide or scan his merchant loyalty card through the payment terminal 115 and/or ECR 110 {or enter his loyalty number or other identification number such as a phone number into the payment termina! 115 and/or ECR 110} which will transmit the customer's merchant ioyaity number directly to the communication staging server 255 of the IMS 16S, thereby obviating the need for biometric authentication and extraction of the electronic wallet as described in steps 405 to 420. instead, the communication staging server 255 may submit the customer^'s merchant Ioyaity identification number as received directly from the merchant POS 105 to the targeted offers server 245 to obtain the customer's targeted offers from the customer targeted offers database 250 which it then forwards to the incentive redemption controller 140 in step 430. In yet another embodiment the incentive redemption contrøϋer 140 may be bypassed in its entirety, with the targeted offers obtained in step 425 being coupled with the electronic wallet that is transmitted to the BAP 120 in step 435 In such an embodiment, the 8AP 120 may have the processing and memory capabilities to serve as an incentive redemption controller for the particular merchant POS 105 whereby the ECR 110 corresponds with the BAP 120 in steps 450 though 455.

Report Generation Capabilities

[0032] As previously discussed, !MS 165 may provide additional functionality to merchants, such as generating reports based on its tracking of redemptions and customer purchase history (e.g., through its receipt of Megs through the merchant loyalty program subcomponent 200). Collecting transaction and redemption data enables the MS 165 to refine its targeting algorithms for creating targeted offers and provide merchants With detailed reports of customer value and shopping behavior and analysts of the merchant^'s transaction activity. Such reports may include measures of customer retention, information pertaining to customer inventory (number of customers within different segments), information pertaining to customer segmentations relating to merchant sales, benchmark comparisons with other stores within a merchant chain, levels of customer identification, etc. and may reflect total merchant chain measures, division or region measures, and/or individual merchant measures Such reports may additionally enable the merchant to manually adjust his targeting preferences and/or supplement them by extending relevant incentives to specific customers that the reports indicate may be receptive Those with ordinary skill in the art wiϋ recognize that reports generated by the llviS 165 may be delivered to merchants through a variety of distribution methods, iπciυding through the Internet (e.g., web reporting), allowing the merchant and ail authorized personnel to view them via a web browser, or through a periodic publication sent to the merchant on a regular basis (i.e . weekly, monthly, quarterly}, Such reports may integrate various observable factors, such as viewing types of safes (such as sales within a specific product category) across different customer segments. CPGs may also have authorized access to these same reports (product and customer category management) for their respective categories and products.

£0033! Although the present invention has been described with reference to the alternative embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that changes may be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and scope of this disclosure. For example, the present invention has been described mainly with reference to analyzing personal incentives and creating targeted offers for an individual customer. However, those with ordinary skilf in the art will recognize that the targeting engine 240 may analyze customer purchase habits and present targeted offers to customers based on a hαuseholding basis rather than on an individual basis "Househαlding" as used herein refers generally to a method of consolidating or grouping information about any given person, family, household, company, friends, social network or other identified group. Techniques to utilize households across multiple merchants as disclosed and taught in U.S. patent application 11/421 ,458 may be implemented in conjunction with the teachings herein. Similarly, while the present invention has primarily discussed personal incentives in the form of discount offers to customers, certain embodiments may also enable persona! incentives :n the form of advertisements For example, a CPG may desire to determine which customers are the best to target for certain advertisements (as opposed to offers) Targeted CPG advertisements, may for example, be printed out tn the sheet of offers that are given to the customer during step 335 of Figure 3. The present invention has also mainly been described with reference to a ^"bricks and mortar^' merchant infrastructure as described in Figure 1. However, those with ordinary skill in the art wiii recognize that other merchant channels such as, but not limited to, an online or e-commerce transaction architecture or a mobile device transactions architecture could also make use of the claimed invention (e.g.,. merchant-specific loyalty identification information could be tracked by the merchant in a similar manner as discussed herein in such architectures). Similarly, the present invention has bean primarily described with reference to a biometricaliy enhanced payment infrastructure, and those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that πon-biometricaliy enhanced payment infrastructures similar in sptrit to that described in Figure 1 may also serve to support the present invention. Terminology used in the foregoing description is for the purpose of describing the particular versions or embodiments only, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention which wiii be limited only by the appended claims. As used herein and in the appended claims, the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" include plural references unless the context dearly dictates otherwise. Similarly, the words "for example", "such as", "include," "includes" and "including^* when used herein shall be deemed in each case to be followed by the words "without limitation," Unless defined otherwise herein, ail technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meanings as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. All publications mentioned herein are incorporated by reference. Nothing herein is to be construed as an admission that the embodiments disclosed herein are not entitled to antedate such disclosure by virtue of prior invention. Thus, various modifications, additions and substitutions and the iike can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention and these are therefore considered to be within the scope of the invention as defined tn the following claims.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1 A method for redeeming targeted offers for a customer at a merchant location, the method comprising: obtaining a merchant loyalty identifier relating to the customer: locating in a database a set of personal incentives targeted for the customer; transmitting data elements relating to each persona! incentive in the set to a redemption controller located at the merchant location: receiving at the redemption controller a product code relating to a product scanned at a merchant point of sale; determining at the redemption controller whether the product code matches any of the data elements for any personal incentive in the set: and transmitting discount information relating to the product to the merchant point of sate.

2 The method of claim 1 further comprising: receiving a biometnc sample of the customer from the merchant point of sale, obtaining a customer identifier upon a successful comparison of the biornetric sample with a registered biornetric sample relating to the customer; extracting an electronic wallet associated with the customer identifser. and extracting the merchant loyalty identifier from the electronic wallet.

3 The method of claim 1 wherein the merchant loyalty Identifier relates to a household of which the customer is a member

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the data elements for each personal incentive include a UPC code and a discount amount

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the product code relating to the scanned product is a UPC code.

8. The method of claim i further comprising receiving at the redemption controller redemption information from the merchant point of sale upon discounting the scanned product

7. A method for activating targeted offers for 3 Customer the method comprising: obtaining a merchant loyalty identifier relating to the customer; locating in a database a set of personal incentives targeted for the customer; transmitting information relating to each personal incentive in the set to a customer display; and marking the persona! incentives in the set as activated.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising: receiving a biometnc sample of the customer from the customer display, obtaining a customer identifier upon a successful comparison of the biometnc sampie with a registered biometric sampie relating to the customer; extracting an electronic wallet associated with the customer identifier, and extracting the merchant loyalty identifier from the electronic wallet.

9 The method of claim 7 wherein the customer display is a loyalty ksosk at a merchant location

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the customer display is a web browser on an online terminal

11 , The method of claim 7 wherein the customer display is a display of a mobile device

12 The method of claim 11 further comprising: receiving a mobile identifier from the mobile device; and extracting the merchant loyalty identifier related to the mobile identifier from a device registration database

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the mobile identifier ss a mobile phone number

14. The method of claim 7 wherein the transmitted information relating to each persona! incentive in the set includes a discount amount, a product code, a description of the product, and a display image of the product,

15 A batch process for generating targeted offers for customers, the process comprising- storing merchant information received from a merchant on a periodic basis in a data warehouse; receiving a poo! of persona! incentives from the merchant; transmitting the pool of personal incentives to a targeting engine coupied to the data warehouse; generating targeted offers for customers based upon characteristics of each of the persona) incentives in the pool and the merchant information stored in the data warehouse; and storing the targeted offers in a database for future activation by customers.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the merchant information received from the merchant includes one or more of customer loyalty information, product taxonomy information, customer segmentation information, redemption information and transaction iog information.

17. The method of claim 15 wherein the characteristics of each personal incentive include one or more of a product code, discount amount, customer limit, distribution limit, customer segment requirement, and targeting strategy.

18. The method of claim 15 wherein the persona! incentives in the pool have a common effective date, expiration date, and targeting date.

19. The method of claim 15 wherein transmitting the pooi of personal incentives to the targeting engine automatically occurs on a particular targeting date,

20 An incentive management system to facilitate the distribution and redemption of personal incentives to customers, the incentive management system comprising: a merchant loyalty program subcomponent for storing merchant information relatsng to a merchant loyalty program; a communication staging server for transmitting personal incentives Io customers for activation and for transmitting personal incentives to a redemption controller at a merchant location to facilitate redemption by customers, a targeting engine for generating targeted offers of personal incentives for customers based upon analysis of the characteristics of the persona! incentives and the merchant information stored by the merchant loyalty program; and a targeted offers database for storing the targeted offers generated by the targeting engine.

21. The incentive management system of claim 20. further comprising: a biorπetπc database for storing registered biometric samples of customers: a biometric authentication server coupled to the biometric database to retrieve customer authentication information: an electronic wallet database for storing electronic wallets associated with customers; and an electronic wallet server coupied to the electronic wallet database to retrieve electronic wallets.

22. The incentive management system of claim 20 further comprising a device registration database storing device identifiers associated with customers.

23. The incentive management system of claim 20 wherein the merchant information relating to a merchant loyalty program includes one or more of customer loyalty information, product taxonomy information, customer segmentation information, redemption information and t-log information

24. The incentive management system of claim 20 wherein the merchant loyalty program subcomponent composes one or more of a product taxonomy database, customer information database, merchant transaction fogs database, customer segmentation database, and offer database to store poois of persona! incentives created by merchants