1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to virtual shopping, and more particularly to an electronic shopping system and method for virtual shopping on a network using electronic catalogue data defined by the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, on-line shopping has become increasingly popular at virtual shops realized on a network, such as the Internet. Shoppers can use product catalogues that electronically provide product information on the network (hereinafter referred to as electronic catalogues), including product numbers, which allows the unique designation of each product. Product ordering is managed based on these product numbers.
In one system, electronic catalogue data that is less subject to change, such as a format or an outline of the electronic catalogue, is stored in a web server constituting the electronic catalogue, and data requested or required by a browser that is frequently subject to chance, such as information on products that consumers want to see in the electronic catalogue, is held in a database in a server. The electronic catalogue in this system is dynamically produced, and is displayed with the less-frequently altered information stored in a web server, combined with frequently altered data directly taken in from a database as requested by a browser.
In the system described above, product information for the electronic catalogue is manually registered in a database. In an electronic shopping system, products to be handled are given unique product numbers. Therefore, minor changes that are quite frequently made in products (such as, for example, changes to diversify products in color) continually increase the number of available products, which increases the difficulty of managing the products.
An electronic catalogue of items, such as travel packages and shoes, which have a great variety, contain pricing and descriptive data that is often common for many of the items. However, there does not exist an electronic catalogue system utilizing this duplication of data that is particular to an electronic catalogue. Therefore, an employee must manually register and maintain the current electronic catalogue of products with many varieties, which requires a fairly high degree of labor.
Furthermore, even a conventional mail order service involving a great deal of manual work sometimes suffers from human mistakes, leading to, for example, a situation where a product ordered is different from the product delivered. Current electronic shopping systems have not been immune to such problems.