METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SELECTIVE DISTRIBUTION OF DISCOUNT COUPONS

摘要

A system for automatically distributing dis-count coupons or certificates in a retail store, condi-tioned on a preselected combination of present and pastshopping behavior of a customer whose order is beingprocessed at a checkout stand. Generation of a print-able discount coupon can be based on any desired combi-nation of customer-supplied data, obtained from a cus-tomer identification data base, past shopping activity,derived from data gathered during previous customer vis-its to the store, and present shopping activity, as evi-denced by items identified in the current customer or-der. If all of the preselected conditions for genera-tion of a coupon are satisfied, the coupon is generatedand printed at the checkout stand.