1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of electronic commerce. In particular, the invention relates to a technique for selling and delivering consumer products to customers using a data network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies have been delivering goods to customer homes for years using many different kinds of delivery systems. Examples run from mail order catalog shopping to on-line ordering and delivery services such as those provided by Amazon.com and Peapod.com. Indeed, the demand for home shopping and home delivery is increasing. However, many of the conventional systems which provide home shopping and home delivery services have significant limitations that prevent their adoption on a large scale basis.
For example, the on-line grocery delivery service provided by Peapod.com (implemented by Peapod, Inc.) allows customers to access an on-line grocery store to place grocery orders. “Shoppers” (i.e. employees of Peapod) fill the orders by traveling to local grocery stores and purchasing the groceries ordered by the customers. The groceries are then delivered to the customer's home. In order to make a profit on the transaction, Peapod adds delivery charges on to the grocery bill. This makes the groceries more expensive than if the customer had performed the shopping and purchasing himself/herself.
Additionally, when a customer places an order, Peapod can not guarantee that the ordered item will be available to be delivered to the customer. Thus, if the grocery store does not have the ordered item (e.g. out of stock), the “shopper” cannot deliver that item to the customer.
Further, delivery scheduling problems may also arise with on-line shopping services such as those provided by Peapod. Often, it is extremely difficult to fulfill a delivery request for an order to be delivered on the same day that the order was placed. Therefore, many shopping services do not offer this feature. Additionally, it is not uncommon for a scheduled customer delivery window to be missed because the order took too long to fulfill by the “shopper”.
In addition to the Peapod technique, there are other conventional on-line techniques which allow a customer to purchase customer products via the Internet, and then have the purchased products delivered to a customer's shipping address. For example, on-line retailers such as Amazon.com, Inc. provide the ability for a customer to select and purchase various products via the Internet or World Wide Web. Using conventional techniques, an on-line product purchasing transaction will typically include the following steps.
First, the customer selects one or more products to be purchased. Once the customer has finished selecting the desired product(s), the customer may then proceed to a check-out or order confirmation page. During the check-out or order confirmation process, the customer provides the necessary information for completing the transaction purchase, such as, for example, the customer's name, credit card number, shipping address, etc. Before the order is confirmed by the on-line retailer, (e.g., Amazon.com), the billing and financial information is verified and processed. For example, if a credit card is used by the customer to purchase selected on-line products, a credit card transaction for the total amount of the purchase will be authorized before the purchase order is confirmed and fulfilled by the merchant. Once the payment transaction has been authorized, the on-line merchant typically fulfills the order by obtaining the purchased products, and shipping the purchased products the customer's shipping address using a common carrier (e.g. third-party courier) such as, for example, UPS, USPS, Federal Express, etc. The customer's credit card is typically billed at the time of shipment.
Although the above-described on-line product purchasing technique provides the convenience of allowing a customer to purchase and receive a desired product without having to venture outside his or her home, current on-line shopping techniques suffer from a number of additional disadvantages (in addition to those described previously). For example, many on-line merchants provide adequate customer service relating to on-line product purchases, but typically provide inadequate customer service for handling returns or customer complaints. Further, once the customer's order has been processed, a customer typically does not have the ability to change, alter, or cancel the order. Rather, the customer must typically wait until he or she receives the originally ordered goods, and then must make a subsequent request to the on-line merchant for returning or modifying at least a part of the order. This latter request is typically handled as a separate transaction on the merchant's side, and may involve lengthy delays. Additionally, if the customer wishes to return one or more products, the customer is typically required by the merchant to first obtain a return authorization number (after first submitting a return request), and typically is responsible for paying shipping costs for shipping the returned products back to the merchant.
The following example may help to illustrate some of the potential problems which a customer may encounter when purchasing products via on-line retailers or merchants. First, let us assume that a customer has selected two books for purchase using an on-line merchant, such as, for example, Amazon.com. When the customer proceeds to the check-out page, the customer authorizes a total amount (i.e., for the books, tax, and shipping) to be billed to his or her credit card. Once the credit card authorization for the total amount has been received, the merchant fulfills the order and forwards the order to a common carrier for shipment. The customer's credit account will be billed at this time for the total amount specified above.
After the order has been fulfilled by the merchant, the customer is typically unable to modify or cancel the order. Thus, for example, if the customer subsequently wishes to cancel one of the ordered books after the merchant has fulfilled the order, the customer must first wait to receive the book, and then submit a separate request to the on-line merchant for returning the book. It is worth noting that since the purchased items are typically shipped using an independent courier service or common carrier such as UPS, Federal Express, or the U.S. postal service, there is no mechanism in place whereby the customer is able to return the undesired product (e.g., book) back to the delivery courier for an immediate refund. Rather, as is typically the case, the customer must first obtain a return authorization number from the merchant, re-package the unwanted product, and ship the unwanted product back to the merchant. Typically, the customer is required to pay for shipping charges for returning a product, even if the product was received in a defective condition.
Once the returned product is received by the merchant, it is typically processed within four to six weeks, meaning that a credit for the returned product may not be issued to the customer until four weeks after the product has been received by the merchant. In the example above, a credit, when issued, may appear as a refund or a credit on the customer's credit card account.
An additional problem with conventional on-line purchasing transactions relates to merchandise availability. For example, when a merchant receives a request for a product return, the merchant is not able to include the returned product as part of the merchant's current inventory until the returned product is physically received at the merchant's site and the return processed, which may take up to 4 to 6 weeks. Moreover, until the returned order is processed, the returned merchandise will typically not be included as part of the inventory made available for customer purchase. This results in an inefficient allocation of resources.
In light of the above, there exists a continual need to improve upon electronic commerce and on-line purchasing techniques.