Importance

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Abstract

A system and method that provides suppliers or sellers with a competitive opportunity to influence consumers at the precise moment a purchasing decision is being made. A consumer using a personal wireless device (110), which has an integrated bar code scanner (120), scans the bar code of a product in a store. The device, using wireless communication (420), sends the scanned product information and a consumer ID to a processing application (430). The processing application (430) sends a profile of the consumer's past shopping behavior, the scanned product information and other data to each interested supplier's competitive incentive offer engine (470). Each supplier's incentive engine determines the optimal incentive to offer and returns this data to the processing application (430) where the incentives are collectively sent back to the consumer's device (110) using wireless communication (421). The device displays the competing incentives and the consumer selects one or more of the incentives presented and repeats this process throughout the store. Upon checkout, a bar code identifying the store and point of sale register is scanned and the incentives are redeemed by scanning them into the store's point of sale register like conventional printed coupons via a display (240) on the device that dynamically renders standard coupon bar codes. The redeemed incentives are then sent from the device to the processing application using wireless communication (422) where they are reconciled and the store is given credit for the redeemed values.

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First Claim