Online marketplace management system with automated pricing tool

Abstract

An online marketplace management system includes software for managing sales by a user on one or more online marketplaces that are operated by entities other than the user. Online marketplaces are online e-commerce sales (e.g., retail) outlets that act as aggregators where third-party sellers (e.g., retailers) can sell items through branded web portals of the online marketplaces for a fee or a percentage of the sales prices. The software of the online marketplace management system includes an inventory management tool for managing inventory that is offered for sale on the one or more online marketplaces, and a pricing tool that provides automatic pricing of inventory that is offered for sale on the one or more online marketplaces, the automatic pricing being based upon real-time pricing of like inventory available on at least one online marketplace from one or more third parties other than the user.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE[0001]This application is a continuation of application of Ser. No. 11 / 482,548, filed Jul. 7, 2006, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 697,709 filed Jul. 8, 2005, which applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to the management of inventory and sales of goods and services and, in particular, to a system that manages inventory and sales through online marketplaces and includes automated pricing based real-time pricing of other sellers within an online marketplace.SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION[0003]Online marketplaces are defined herein as online e-commerce sales (e.g., retail) outlets that act as aggregators where third-party sellers (e.g., retailers) can sell items through branded web portals of the online marketplaces for a fee or a percentage of the sales prices. Generally, an online marketplace manages the customer data, the order process, and the payment tr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006]Accordingly, the present invention provides an online marketplace management system that automates management of inventory, sales, and pricing for a seller in an online marketplace.

[0007]The present invention includes software and methods that in operation provide a system for managing the sale of, for example, merchandise, through online marketplaces such as Amazon.com, eBay Stores, Half.com, ABE, Alibris, etc. The online marketplace management system allows users to sell large numbers of items (e.g., tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands) through multiple marketplaces simultaneously from a single database.

[0009]The online marketplace management system also incorporates automated pricing tools, which may include pricing based on competitive market placement (cheapest price, average price of first five cheapest items, average price in class, etc.), regular and automated price updates for all inventory, allowing sellers to maintain competitive pricing automatically, cost of goods and profit indices, allowing sellers to protect margins, and monopoly pricing, allowing sellers to compare pricing between various marketplaces and set prices to highest marketplace price for a set period of time.

Problems solved by technology

Many, many sellers list and sell too many items on online marketplaces to efficiently handle the cumbersome manual entry, tracking, and processing of orders, but list and sell far too few items to afford custom computer integration with the online marketplace.

For these many online marketplace sellers, the efficiency or reaching large numbers of customers online is offset by the inefficiency of managing inventory, sales and pricing through the manual user interfaces of online marketplaces.

Moreover, the dynamic nature of pricing is this environment can become very difficult to manage for more than just a few items.

Price changes by different sellers in an online marketplace can quickly render a listed price too high to effect any sale at all or so low that the profitability of the sale is less than optimal.

Manual tracking of prices listed by different sellers, and updating of one's own prices can be time-consuming for small numbers of listed items and virtually impossible with even a moderate number of listed items.

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