An apparatus and system for allowing customers to purchase boutique or specialty items directly from a supplier or wholesaler. The items for purchase are those conventionally available only through retailers such as local boutiques or specialty shops. An example would be salon quality hair care products. The system allows a customer to visit a website on a computer network, such as the Internet, and place an order for the product by providing information on which products are desired for purchas...

A method of performing computer-based on-line commerce in which a client computer issues a group of interrelated commercial requests and each one of a plurality of server computers is available to service at least one of said requests, said method, performed by an intelligent agent, comprising steps of: receiving the group of interrelated commercial requests from said client computer; and finding servers which will satisfy said group of requests using client preference levels indicating for each...

A server receives supplier information from a supplier including a product/service that the supplier is offering along with a discount for the product/service. The supplier information further includes geographic locations where a customer can physically purchase the product/service, the sale dates, and supplier contact information. The supplier information is stored by the server in a database. The server also receives customer information from a customer including a product/service that the cu...

According to a computer-implemented approach for renting items to customers, customers specify what items to rent using item selection criteria separate from deciding when to receive the specified items. According to the approach, customers provide item selection criteria to a provider provides the items indicated by the item selection criteria to customer over a delivery channel. The provider may be either centralized or distributed depending upon the requirements of a particular application. A...

A custom store web page uses an external administrator to provide configuration data for a custom store web page. The configuration data can include virtual bundles of products for sale.

A system and method for implementation of product searches via a search engine over a networked computer system such as the Internet. In particular, a user may execute a search for product offers that are accompanied with reward components (e.g. reward points, rebates, coupons, etc.) and/or those that allow payment in whole or in part with payment components (e.g. reward points, rebates, coupons, etc.).

A system and method for replenishing a wireless terminal account of a customer of a telecommunication service provider. In one embodiment the method includes transmitting through a point-of-distribution device a merchant identification, a customer mobile identification number and an amount to the telecommunication service provider. The method also includes validating the merchant identification and crediting the customer account. The method may include delivering a merchant confirmation to the p...

An exemplary embodiment of the invention is a method for allowing a potential purchaser to specify a custom color to a vendor. The method is implemented through a potential purchaser computer coupled to a vendor host computer system by a network. The method includes receiving at the vendor host computer system a request to specify a custom color from the potential purchaser computer. The potential purchaser computer is provided with a custom color request form. The vendor host computer system re...

An object of the present invention is to provide an order placement and acceptance management system and an order placement and acceptance management method, which is flexible and user-friendly for an order acceptant's side.The present invention comprises an order database for entirely storing the order data of an orderer in increments of order, demand processing means for receiving the attribution of the order data that is designated by the orderer via a network, retrieving means for receiving ...

The object of the present invention is to provide a product ordering system, product ordering method and program thereof that is capable of promoting the sales of a product or service by managing order information by identifying an orderer and using information presented to ordering terminals.The product ordering system of the present invention is equipped with a plurality of ordering terminals installed at predetermined locations which acquire order information by prompting an orderer to select...