Systems and methods for virtual population mutual relationship management using electronic computer driven networks

Abstract

A method and system for creating and managing Virtual Population mutual relationships is disclosed. The method uses a Rich Semantic Model component, expert system components, and various interface components and other components to dynamically alter the visitation experience as received by the Visitor at a computer and to allow the Visitor control over their Virtual Representative that controls this personal experience.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED PRIOR APPLICATIONS[0001] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 150,380, filed Aug. 23, 1999, the subject matter of which is incorporated by reference herein.[0002] The present invention relates to systems and methods for dynamically exchanging information electronically using an Electronic Communication Network. More particularly, the present invention relates to creating and managing personalized experiences for Visitors to a network Enterprise Site to create and maintain a dynamic virtual mutual relationship between an electronic expert system emulating a real world Enterprise Expert and the Visitor. Most particularly, the present invention relates to such systems applied to electronic commerce and specifically to electronic marketing applications.BACKGROUND OF RELATED TECHNOLOGY[0003] Traditional mediums of marketing and advertising have all been inherently broadcast. A message delivered on radio, television, billboards...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Using this traditional broadcast media, the marketer has only been able to deliver personalized messages to a broad base.

However, such systems are very limited in their ability to provide the visitor with a unique visitation experience as they are limited to comparing and matching information contained in various databases (e.g., a profile database and an advertisement database).

These systems are also limited to advertising.

The aforementioned advertising systems do not allow for particularly effective personalized marketing.

They are very limited in their ability to present the user with a customized web site visitation experience, relying primarily on correlating particular advertisements with certain information known about the visitor.

Customization of the visitation experience is limited to utilizing information contained in a profile database, which may be updated as the visitor navigates the web site.

However, advertising is but a small part, and even not the most important part, of a visitation experience.

To date, efforts to create computer-driven network systems to manage personalized relationships in electronic space have suffered from the failure to apply the right technology to the problem.

Such systems are unable to provide personalized visitation experiences to web site visitors which mirror the experiences those visitors would have in the real world.

Human interaction as it occurs naturally between individuals is extraordinarily complex and involves aspects of human intelligence such as reasoning, memory, behavior, and perception.

Translating features of a successful mutual relationship to a virtual place, such as over a computer network, to create and foster virtual mutual relationships is a very complex task.

However, these attempts have been largely inadequate.

While they are artificial intelligence systems, they are not expert or rules-based systems, i.e., they do not use inferencing engines to apply a set of rules to sets of facts or represented semantically modeled information to obtain reasoned results.

While these companies may claim to offer systems which use reasoning capabilities similar to that of a salesperson in order to better understand a visitor and provide a unique visitation experience, these systems lack sufficient artificial intelligence components to effectively establish virtual mutual relationships that are based on aspects of human interaction.

These systems do not use expert systems technology and lack the sophistication of this technology.

While collaborative filtering, data mining, and the use of neural networks provide useful and sophisticated tools for segmentation, they are limited to but a small aspect of the problems associated with one-to-one marketing in a non-broadcast media such as the World Wide Web.

As we have seen, advertisement serving technology is limited to the "foreign context" aspect of a visitation experience and is very much like traditional broadcast advertising, simply applied on-line.

The "brain emulation" techniques offered by neural networks and collaborative filtering are technologies that are too immature to emulate the type of sophisticated human behavior required in such a salesperson.

Another weakness of these technologies is that the relationship with the user is completely one-sided.

Thus, until now, personalized marketing using the Internet has not been particularly successful.

The system approaches taken have been either too limited in their outlook, have used inappropriate underlying technology, i.e., no AI, or have applied an ineffective or inefficient Al technology.

Otherwise a rule is unsuccessful.

While the Visitor Tool can add new facts to maintain a self-consistent profile, the Visitor Tool is more complex in that it engages in real time interaction with the Visitor and, as such, can prompt for new and related information, for example.

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