Recently, traditional sales environments have made way for a new World Wide Web (web) approach to sales. The web is one facet of a global computer network commonly referred to as the Internet. Once, access to the Internet was essentially limited to corporations, universities, and government agencies. In recent years, however, consumer network connections have become commonplace, with connections being provided via dial-up modem connections to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), through cable modems (using the coaxial cables delivering cable-TV service), digital subscriber lines (DSL) (carried over common twisted pair telephone wiring), wireless services, and other mediums.
The Internet allows computer systems and networks, by way of protocols and bridging/routing hardware, to interconnect via the Internet to form networks similar to local area networks (LANs or “intranets”). Through the internet, consumers are able to direct Internet browsers (e.g., Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer) to virtual storefronts encoded as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or equivalent “web pages”, as well as access other Internet “content” such as electronic mail (e-mail), news services, stock reports, travel services, and the like.
However, unlike in traditional retail contexts, there is no restriction on online stores regarding the location of goods offered by a store, nor the contents of the store. That is, a “virtual store” can present as in-stock goods that will actually be provided by multiple different vendors in communication with the virtual store. When a purchase is made, the virtual store can contact different vendors to effect delivery of purchased goods. With the advent of easy internetworking, and the global scope of the Internet, merchants and consumers are provided with heretofore unknown ability to reach a very large audience of other merchants and consumers.
To facilitate a consumer's spending quite a while browsing through a virtual store, such stores provide a virtual “shopping cart” to track intended purchases. As a consumer selects items for sale, these items are placed in the virtual shopping cart for later checkout. When the consumer ultimately seeks to leave the store, the consumer is directed to a virtual register to complete a point of sale transaction for goods accumulated within the shopping cart.
Although virtual storefronts greatly facilitate transactions by allowing arbitrarily complex (or simple) virtual storefronts, these virtual stores lack an ability to impose structure and coordinate the sales process. That is, frequently businesses want certain classes of employees to purchase particular collections of products (packages), or purchase from only certain types of products. For example, technical support personnel may be required to obtain certain high-end software and hardware, while recently hired employees may be restricted in their purchase ability. Also, employers may desire to control the registration and installation of purchased goods.
Unfortunately, imposing such structure on the sales process is not yet provided by virtual storefronts. In addition, virtual storefronts presently lack ability to seek alternate sales and installation avenues when a customer appears to lack authorization to make a purchase. Thus, in order to impose sales requirements, track licenses, etc., an inefficient approach is generally employed, where an employee is designated as responsible for performing purchases for other employees and monitoring installations of these other employees.