The present invention relates to a method and a system for implementing anauction process involving at least one user with a cellular telephone and anauction center.
Auctions as a sales process are well known. In auctions a group of participants hasthe possibility to buy an offered good by successively issuing price offers, socalled bids. At the start of an auction a minimum selling price is frequentlypresented by the organizer of the auction. Then, every participant of the auctionhas the possibility to place an offer for this good. The offers of the participantsincrease, either by predetermined amounts or by free amounts. If no participantwants to increase his price offer anymore, the participant with the highest offerobtains the good for the offered price.
To buy goods in an auction requires physical presence at a certain location. This istrue for personal auctions, where the participants physically gather, as well as foronline auctions on the internet, where each of the participants still must be presentaround a computer connected to the internet. Furthermore, these auctions requirepermanent monitoring of the auctioning process in order to know the status of theauction and the necessity for further action. Finally, online auctions regularlyrequire identification and registration processes of the participants, since theidentity and authorization of an internet user cannot be clarified as easily as this can be done in auctions requiring physical presence. This identification andregistration process may deter potential participants of the auction.
Therefore, one object of the present invention is to enable individuals toparticipate in an auction at an arbitrary location, without being bound to theavailability of a certain computer or internet equipment. It is another object of theinvention to allow such participant to follow the relevant portions of an auctionwithout the need to monitor the whole bidding process. Finally, it is an object toprovide a simple and convenient method for carrying out auctions and forparticipating in such auctions.
These and other objects are achieved by a method for determining a final leadingprice offer for a good using an auction center and a plurality of cellular telephonesof a plurality of users, wherein each of said plurality of cellular telephones isassigned to one of said plurality of said users, and wherein further each of saidplurality of cellular telephones has a telephone number, comprising the followingsteps:
- a) sending a bidding invitation for said good from said auction center to saidplurality of cellular telephones,
- b) informing said plurality of users about said bidding invitation for said good bymeans of an acoustical or optical display function of said plurality of cellulartelephones,
- c) returning from at least one of said plurality of cellular telephones price offersfor said good to said auction center in response to said bidding invitation ondemand of at least one of said plurality of users,
- d) registering in said auction center each of said price offers and the arrival timeat said auction center for each of said price offers,
- e) determining a present leading price offer for said good by identifying thehighest of said price offers having the earliest arrival time at said auctioncenter,
- f) communicating said present leading price offer to said plurality of cellulartelephones,
- g) repeating at least the above steps c) to f) until a closing criterion is reached,and
- h) fixing a final leading price offer, which is identical with said present leadingprice offer which was last determined in a repetition of step e) before saidclosing criterion was reached.
The cellular telephones used in the present invention may be any standard mobilephones. The cellular telephones must be able to display acoustically or visuallymessages, such as a bidding invitation or a leading price offer. SMS messagesmay also be supported by these cellular telephones.
Each cellular telephone naturally has a telephone number. Furthermore, eachcellular telephone is assigned to a user, that means behind each telephone is auser. It is understood that a user may have more than one cellular telephoneassigned to him or her. It may also be possible for several users to share onetelephone in the sense that this group of users is collectively responsible for theuse of this telephone.
The auction center of the present invention organizes and administrates theauction. Its tasks include sending bidding invitations, receiving price offers,administrating these price offers, informing participants in the auction about otherprice offers, determining leading price offers, acknowlegding a final leading priceoffer, and closing the auction. For this purpose the auction center comprises therespective means for sending bidding invitations, etc.. These means may berealized by any suitable technology. Typically, the auction center will comprise acomputer system on which a software program is implemented in order to performthe above mentioned steps and tasks.
The auction center is connected to the cellular telephones of the users via acellular telephone network supported by a network provider. The price offersreturned from cellular telephones may be manually input into an auction center'scomputer system by telephone operators or automatically by using means forconverting messages of cellular telephones to computer compatible information.The auction center may further be connected or connectable to the internet, toother auction centers or to outside databases, in order to accomplish variousbusiness goals. For example, the auction center may be connected with theinternet, so that an auction may be carried out partially via cellular telephones andpartially via the internet. In another example, the auction center may communicatewith another auction center in order to coordinate several auctions, which are, forexample, conducted in different territories. Furthermore, in yet another example,the auction center may contact outside databases, for example, in order to provideinformation about possible customers or about actual bidders, like marketinginformation or even bank account numbers.
When a new auction starts the auction center issues a bidding invitation tocustomers. This bidding invitation may contain a description of the good to beauctioned, the starting price and the closing time of the auction, or paymentrequirements.
The customers, that means the plurality of users receiving the bidding invitation,may be chosen from the totality of users of cellular telephones. This group ofusers may be determined according to any suitable criterion. For example, onlyusers of a certain cellular telephone network may be chosen, based on business aswell as technical requirements. Furthermore, the present location, the interests,the age, the credit card ownership or any other marketing relevant informationabout individual customers may be used as the chosing criterion. However, thecustomer need not be registered with the auction center, although it is possible toprovide such a registration for ease of payment or even for business purposes, likethe implementation of discount schemes.
The cellular telephone of the user will present the user the content of the messagein an acoustical or in an optical way. For example, the offered good can bedescribed by words displayed in a display of the cellular telephone. However, thedescribing words can also be read by a natural or a computer voice to the user, sothat the user may even take part in an auction while driving his car. If the data lineallows, it is also imaginable to display a picture of the good on the display of thecellular telephone.
Each addressed customer, i.e. user of a cellular telephone, has the possibility togive a bid, that means a price offer, for the good which is auctioned. This bid canexceed the last offer for this good by an allowed predetermined value or by anyother value, depending on the auction scheme used. The user's actual price offer isreturned to the auction center.
The auction center registers all incoming bids, in particular the amount of the bidand its arrival time. The arrival time is important if two bids having the sameamount are received. The registration step may also include a registration of thetelephone number of each cellular telephone from which a price offer wasreturned to the auction center and which transmits its telephone number to saidauction center. The auction scheme may provide that only cellular telephones maybe used for the wireless auction which actually send their own telephone numberwith the price offer to the auction center, because otherwise identification of usersutilizing the cellular telephone for participating in the auction may becomedifficult. However, it is also imaginable that the users do not have to send theirtelephone numbers and that only the user with the highest final leading price offer,that means the user who wins the auction, is asked for identification. Thisidentification request may be made by any suitable means, including messages tobe displayed on the user's display.
In this context, the user who gave the final leading price offer or who initiated anyother price offer of interest may be identified by contacting a database containingcorrelated information about the plurality of users to which at least one of thecellular telephones is assigned, wherein the users can be identified by means ofthe telephone number of the cellular telephones.
This identification may be performed automatically, that means the bidder doesnot have to apply with the auction center in order to take part in the auction. Forthis purpose of identification the auction center may be connected to a customerdatabase of the cellular network provider which provides the auction center withthe necessary information about the bidder, in particular his name, address andbilling information, like credit card number or bank account number, based on thetelephone number of the user.
If the cellular telephone of a user does not send its telephone number with a bid, aspecial identification process may be initiated, depending on the business schemeof the auction. This identification process may be initiated at the time of closingthe auction and may require a direct contact of the user with the auction center,via his cellular telephone or via any other means, in order to convey his or herrelevant identification information, like name, address, credit card number.However, the identification process may also be performed at an earlier stage, forexample after first returning a price offer, and consist in sending the telephonenumber of the cellular telephone to enable the auction system to communicatewith this cellular telephone, i.e. the user. The information gained in thisidentification process may then be stored in a user database. If such identificationschemes are used, rather than the above automatic identification schemes usingsent telephone numbers, it is also possible to assign access code numbers toregistered users of an auction system.
The auction center processes all incoming bids. The bids for an auction are sortedaccording to price and arrival time. The arrival time is important if two or more price offers are identical in price. This sorting process allows the determination ofa present leading price offer. This is the highest price offer, and, if more than oneprice offer with the highest price exist, the price offer with the earlier arrival time.
This present leading price offer is then communicated to the cellular telephones ofthe above mentioned customers, or only to the sub-group of such customers whohave responded to the bidding invitation by sending in a price offer. Thiscommunication may have several forms. For example, a message may be sentshowing the present leading price offer in this auction. Instead or in addition, amessage may be sent individually to all bidders, except for the bidder havinggiven the present leading price offer, which tells the bidder that his bid has beentopped by a higher or earlier bid. The latter would give the participants thepossibility to return a higher offer. It is also possible to send the bidder with thepresent leading price offer a message that he is leading the field presently.
Such a bidding process can be carried out several times, that means several roundsof bidding may be carried out. When a certain closing criterion is reached, theauction center does not accept any new bids. It then specifies the final leadingprice offer, which is the present leading price offer last determined in a biddinground. The closing criterion may be the expiration of a time period, the number ofbids, a desired price, or any other suitable criterion.
Thereafter, the auction center may initiate an automatic delivery and debitingprocess if the user having given the final leading price offer has already beenidentified and if the auction center thereby has obtained the required billing anddelivery information. Otherwise, the auction center and this user mustcommunicate in order to pay and deliver the auctioned good.
In one embodiment of the present invention the auction center sends aconfirmation request after the fixing of the final leading price offer to the cellulartelephone which returned the final leading price offer. This confirmation request informs the user that he has returned the final leading price offer, i.e. that he haswon the auction. The confirmation request may be combined with a requestconcerning the payment modalities, if necessary. For example, the bank accountor the number of the credit card may be requested by the auction center.
If a confirmation request is sent, a reminder message may be sent from the auctioncenter to the cellular telephone which returned said final leading price offer incase the auction center has not received a confirmation from said cellulartelephone within a certain time period. The auction center may also send morethan one reminders, with the same or different content.
The auction center may then also send a bid acceptance message to the cellulartelephone which returned the final leading price offer, if said cellular telephonehas positively reacted to said confirmation request.
If finally no reaction is obtained from this cellular telephone in response to aconfirmation request, the user who gave the final leading price offer may becontacted directly by telephone or mail and requested to fulfill the obligations ofhis or her bid. However, it is also imaginable, and in instances where this user hasnot and cannot be identified, to exclude the final leading bid and to contact theuser who submitted the next closer bid.
In the scope of the present invention it may be desirable to auction several piecesof the same item, for example, ten discmen, at the same time. In this case themethod according to the present invention could include the step of determining inthe auction center a sequence of a number of final price offers for the good byidentifying the highest price offer, excluding the final leading price offer, havingthe earliest arrival time, and by repeating this process until the desired number offinal price offers has been determined, for example, the ten highest price offers fordiscmen. The auction center will then inform the ten winning bidders accordingly and initiate debiting and delivery, as described above for a single item biddingprocess.
Regardless of whether the bidding process is carried out for one or for severalpieces of a good, it may be desirable to send a message to the user who had sentthe last present leading price offer that his price offer has been topped, if a higherpresent leading price offer has been determined. By means of such a message theuser who had shown particular interest in the bidding may be selectively contactedso that he or she may return another, higher price offer.
In an embodiment of the present invention the auction center and the plurality ofcellular telephones communicate via the Cell Broadcast Center (CBC) system.This system enables the auction center to communicate in an advantageous waywith the cellular telephones. In particular, the users do not have to lock-in to acertain service.
In another embodiment of the present invention the auction center may be aninterface to an online auction server. In this case, the online auction server is aserver in which an auction on the internet is generated and proceeded. Theinterface function of the auction center enables the user of the cellular telephoneto participate in this online auction. The auction center may monitor any of theactions of the bidding process and inform and communicate with the user of acellular telephone as described above for wireless auctions.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent inthe following detailed description of an embodiment.
In order to sell a good the auction center will initiate an auction. This good maybe, for example, a certain new music CD. The auction center may be a computersystem comprising a processor, storage medium and an i/o interface. Via this i/ointerface the auction center may be connected to a telephone provider. The auction center comprises or is connected to a customer database. This database comprisesinformation about the customers which have already returned a bid to the auctioncenter. Within this database or in an separate database information about potentialcustomers, like all customers of a telephone provider may be stored.
First, the auction center will generate a message, which describes the offeredmusic CD. This may be made by the auction center automatically as well as withsupport of the administrator of the auction center. This message, the so calledbidding invitation, may be sent to cellular telephones assigned to a certain groupof customers. The decision which customers will get a bidding invitation may bemade based on all information available to the auction center or the administratorthereof. It is also possible that several different bidding invitations may begenerated, for example, one for a certain group of customers and a special one forall customers which have returned a bid in the last auctions with music CDs. Thebidding invitation may comprise information about the number of offered goods,in this example, the number of offered samples of this music CD. This will beinteresting for the user in order to know that, if, for example, five CDs are offered,he will get a CD even if his price offer is only the fifth highest offer.
The bidding invitation may be a data message, which comprises all kind of datawhich could be presented to the user of the cellular telephone in an acoustical orin an optical way. This means written text messages, spoken messages andpictures as well as a film, for example, wherein the acoustical and the optical wayare combined. This bidding invitation may include specific identificationinformation of this specific auction. For example, a telephone number and/or acertain key may accompany the bidding invitation in order to distinguish theincoming price offers of different auctions. This bidding invitation may be sentfrom the auction center to the addressed cellular telephones via a suitable channel.Such channels may be SMS, CBC, WAP, GPRS and UMPS.
The addressed cellular telephones may receive the sent message and may informthe user about this bidding invitation in the foreseen way. The user may listen toor otherwise access this information immediately or at a later point of time,depending on his or her desires and upon the technical possibilities.
In addition, the bidding invitation may include the information that additionaldescriptions about the offered good, in this example the music CD, are available.This allows the user in this special example to ask the auction center to present,for example, a sample piece of music from the offered music CD.
After receiving the bidding invitation the cellular telephone may be able to returna price offer to the auction center. For this returning of the price offer severaldifferent ways are possible. In order to simplify this bidding process the cellulartelephone may offer the user a bid which is higher than the last present leadingprice offer or the starting price. Then the user of the cellular telephone has only topress one or more buttons on his cellular telephone to return this new price offer.This returning of the price offer can be sent via all possible channels between thecellular telephone and the auction center.
This returning message may furthermore comprise information about the specificauction, if there are several auctions going on at the same time, for example, byusing a certain telephone number for contacting the auction center and/or by usinga key. It may also contain information which allows to identify the user, forexample, the telephone number of the cellular telephone from which the messageof the user was sent if this telephone number permits the identification of the user,for example, via a database. At any rate, the telephone number is unique and canbe employed by the auction center to distinguish the incoming price offers. If thecellular telephone transmits no telephone number the user of the cellulartelephone will have to carry out an identification process. In this process the usermay determine or may get assigned an access code. In this case the access code will be transmitted by the cellular telephone in order to distinguish this user fromother users.
The auction center may register the incoming returned message including the newprice offer. The auction center will be able to store this incoming message in anysuitable way, so that the auction center can process the information.
This processing of the incoming information can comprise an analyzing of thebidding user by comparing the identification information with a correspondingentry in a customer database. If in this database, for example, several open billsare registered in connection with this user, the auction center may be able toignore this new price offer. If the user participates for the first time in an auctionand there is no information about the user in the customer database, it is alsopossible that the auction center processes the incoming new price offer, but asksparallelly the new user for additional information, like the age or the bank accountin order to allow an easy debiting in the future.
Each incoming price offer is registered with respect to its value and its arrivaltime. In the next step the auction center determines the present leading price offer.If a number of goods are offered in one auction, frequently a certain number ofprice offers are determined by the auction center which are all leading the auctionin the sense that they all entitle to a purchase of one piece of the auctioned good.
The auction center communicates regularly with the plurality of cellulartelephones in order to inform them about the present leading price offer. This maybe a message to all customers with the information that a new present leadingprice offer with a certain value has reached the auction center. In addition oralternatively the auction center may send a message to the user who returned thelast leading price offer, in which the auction center informs this user that his priceoffer has been topped. Other comparable communication between the auctioncenter and the cellular telephones may be also possible.
After a certain closing criterion has been reached the auction center may notaccept new price offers anymore. Such a closing criterion may be a certain pointin time, but other suitable criterions may also be possible. After closing theauction the auction center will fix at least one final leading price offer.
In this embodiment the auction center will determine the user to whom thiscellular telephone is assigned and will debit the amount of the final leading priceoffer to the bank account specified in the customer database. In anotherembodiment the user may first be informed by a confirmation request about theend of the auction and that he has returned the final leading price offer. The user isasked to confirm this request in order to confirm that he wants to buy the good forthe offered price. This confirmation communication can be realized in variousways.
All described functions of the auction center may be realized in a commoncomputer system, but other solutions are possible as well.
In another embodiment of the present invention the auction center does not initiateauctions on its own. However, it is able to monitor other auctions, like onlineauctions via the internet. The auction center may provide the customers with therelevant information about these auctions and may be able to forward the bidsreturned from the customers in the above mentioned way to the correspondingonline auction.
Therefore, the present invention provides an auction system which enables theuser of this system to participate at any location where his cellular telephone maybe reachable together with an improved user-friendly method for communicatingthe relevant information.