SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC SELECTION OF A GOOD BUY IN PRICE-COMPARISON SITES WHEN THE USER BUYS MORE THAN ONE PRODUCT AT THE SAME TIME

摘要

Price comparison sites on the Internet, which allow users to compare pricesacrossmultiple shops (or in other words allow shopping meta-search), are verypopulartoday. However, these price comparison sites perform optimizations for onlyoneitem at a time but not for combinations of more than one item which can bepurchased from more than one dealer. In other words, If the user wants to buyforexample multiple books at the same time or for example a number of computerpartsat the same time, he has to search for the best shop for each item separately,andthen any attempt for example to optimize the shipping costs by aggregatingmorethan one item from the same shop have to be done manually by the user, whichcantake quite a long time, and the user many times will not succeed to reach thebestoption or even close to it. The present invention describes a system andmethod forautomatic finding of one or more acceptable or near-optimal suggestions fordividing the order between various vendors (preferably in terms of at leastitemprices plus shipment costs) in price-comparison sites when the user buys morethanone product at the same time, preferably by using efficient and practicalheuristics,and preferably with automatically offering additional complementary serviceswhenneeded. The invention solves many problems that are involved in accomplishingthisin an efficient and practical manner, and also describes additional preferablefeatures.