Product catalog services

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2020242579-A1
Application number	US-202016848767-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Apr 14, 2020
Priority date	Oct 30, 2015
Publication date	Jul 30, 2020
Grant date	—

Abstract

A product catalog service allows business entities to create and store product catalogs indicating products that are available from the business entities. A product catalog includes multiple product family definitions. Each product family definition specifies attribute names of a product family and, for each attribute name, a set of allowed attribute values. In order to specify a particular product variant, an entity may supply one of the allowed attribute values for each specified attribute name of the product. The product catalogs may be received from multiple business entities. Each product catalog may also be shared with multiple business entities. A merchant, for example, may select products from a product catalog to purchase from another merchant. When creating a product catalog, a business entity may reference product family definitions of other product catalogs.

First claim

1 - 20 . (canceled)

21 . A system comprising:
one or more processors; and one or more computer-readable media storing instructions executable by the one or more processors, wherein the instructions program the one or more processors to perform actions comprising:
receiving, at one or more servers and from instances of a merchant support application executing on a plurality of point-of-sale (POS) devices associated with respective merchants of a plurality of merchants, data associated with a plurality of transactions of the plurality of merchants;
obtaining, by the one or more servers and from a POS device associated with a first merchant of the plurality of merchants, a first catalog including information regarding one or more first items to be sold by the first merchant;
determining, by the one or more servers and based at least in part on the data and the first catalog, a comparison between the first catalog and a second item of one or more second items associated with a second merchant of the plurality of merchants;
based at least in part the first catalog, at least one of generating or updating, by the one or more servers, a second catalog including information regarding at least one of the one or more second items to be sold by the second merchant; and
transmitting, by the one or more servers, the second catalog to a merchant device of the second merchant.

22 . The system of claim 21 , wherein the first catalog includes information regarding a particular first item.

23 . The system of claim 22 , wherein determining the comparison between the first catalog and the second item comprises determining that the particular first item and the second item share item attributes.

24 . The system of claim 21 , wherein the data includes item attributes of items associated with individual transactions of the plurality of transactions, and wherein the information regarding the one or more first items includes item attributes of the one or more first items to be sold by the first merchant.

25 . The system of claim 24 , wherein the item attributes for a particular instance of an item are stored by the one or more servers in a corresponding data record for the particular instance.

26 . The system of claim 25 , further comprising tracking, by the one or more servers, a location of the particular instance based on the corresponding data record.

27 . The system of claim 21 , wherein generating the second catalog comprises generating a description of at least one of the one or more second items to be sold by the second merchant at least in part on a description of at least one of the one or more first items included in the first catalog.

28 . A method comprising:
receiving, at one or more servers from instances of a merchant support application executing on a plurality of merchant devices associated with respective merchants of a plurality of merchants, data associated with a plurality of interactions of respective merchants of a plurality of merchants; based at least in part on the data, determining, by the one or more servers, a comparison between a first catalog of a first merchant of the plurality of merchants and an item associated with a second merchant of the plurality of merchants; and at least one of generating or updating, by the one or more servers, a second catalog of items associated with the second merchant based at least in part on the comparison.

29 . The method of claim 28 , wherein the item associated with the second merchant comprises a second item, wherein the second catalog of items comprises the second catalog of second items, and wherein the first catalog includes information regarding one or more first items to be sold by the first merchant;

30 . The method of claim 28 , further comprising transmitting, by the one or more servers, the second catalog to at least one of a merchant device of the second merchant or a device of a potential customer of the second merchant.

31 . The method of claim 28 , wherein the first catalog is stored in a database associated with the one or more servers, wherein the database stores a plurality of catalogs associated with respective merchants of the plurality of merchants.

32 . The method of claim 29 , wherein determining the comparison comprises determining a comparison between a plurality of second items and respective first items of the one or more first items.

33 . The method of claim 29 , wherein determining the comparison between the first catalog and the second item comprises determining that the one or more first items and the second item share item attributes.

34 . The method of claim 33 , wherein the item attributes for an item include at least one of a location, owner, variant attributes, product family ID, or text attributes.

35 . One or more computer-readable media storing instructions executable by the one or more processors, wherein the instructions program the one or more processors to perform actions comprising:
receiving, from instances of a merchant support application executing on a plurality of merchant devices associated with respective merchants of a plurality of merchants, data associated with a plurality of interactions of respective merchants of the plurality of merchants; based on the data, determining a comparison between a first catalog of a first merchant of the plurality of merchants and an item associated with a second merchant of the plurality of merchants; and at least one of generating or updating a second catalog of items associated with the second merchant based at least in part on the comparison.

36 . The one or more computer-readable media of claim 35 , the actions further comprising publishing, by the one or more servers, the second catalog for use by a purchaser.

37 . The one or more computer-readable media of claim 35 , the actions further comprising receiving, from the second merchant, a request for generation of the second catalog.

38 . The one or more computer-readable media of claim 35 , wherein he item associated with the second merchant comprises a second item, wherein the second catalog of items comprises a second catalog of second items, and wherein the first catalog includes information regarding one or more first items to be sold by the first merchant.

39 . The one or more computer-readable media of claim 38 , wherein determining the comparison between the first catalog and the second item comprises determining that the one or more first items and the second item share item attributes.

40 . The one or more computer-readable media of claim 35 , wherein the first catalog includes information regarding the location of the first merchant, and wherein determining the comparison between the first catalog and the second item comprises determining that the location of the first merchant is within a threshold distance of a location of the second merchant.

Assignees

• Square Inc

Inventors

• Jen Mark
• Morel Shawn

Classifications

• G06Q10/0874

  Inventory fulfillment (shipping G06Q10/083) · CPC title

• G06Q10/0877

  by inventory control or reporting using inventory tracking or counting · CPC title

• G06Q30/0603

  Catalogue creation or management · CPC title

• G06Q30/0625

  by formulating product or service queries, e.g. using keywords or predefined options · CPC title

• G06Q30/0635

  replenishment orders; recurring orders · CPC title