Internet and related technologies have radically altered how transactions are conducted between businesses and between consumers and suppliers. Online sellers who use these technologies are capable of accepting orders for products and services without manual intervention by the seller. In addition, the online selling environment allows businesses to collect data that can be used to better position and promote their products and improve profitability and volume of sales.
Using this data, an online seller can increase the likelihood of selling to a customer by offering product suggestions based on how that shopper or other related shoppers have browsed and transacted with the business. In addition, sellers have the opportunity to change the display, description, and location of product suggestions dynamically based on the information available during the online selling process. The optimization of product presentation through recommendations, pricing, product description, assortment, signage, and other means is referred to as online merchandising.
The data used by online merchandising is generally referred to as merchandising product data. This merchandising product data generally includes product information (such as product name, SKU number, price, description, and photograph, etc.), data about a product's presentation, assortment and packaging relative to other products or services, and data that is derived from customer buying and browsing activities, such as number of times a product is viewed, number of times the product is purchased, number of click-throughs, buyer segment association, other products associated with the product by virtue of being purchased together, etc.
Currently, collecting different types of data into a database that can be used for online merchandising purposes requires either rebuilding the seller's online systems or performing very costly direct integration of seller's product databases with third party software and services. The cost of rebuilding an online system or performing direct database integration often exceeds the potential sales gain for the seller.
Moreover, the technical complexity of these systems demands professional engineering support for relatively simple online merchandising efforts, greatly increasing the cost and decreasing the speed of implementation.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a method and system that significantly reduces the complexity and cost of creating a usable merchandising product database. Additionally, there exists a need for a method and system that minimizes integration with core customer database systems to reduce or remove costs and delays related to the requirement for engineering resources for database integrations or technical support.