A Personalized Offer Presentation Scheme for Retail In-Store Applications

Retailers are constantly seeking new innovations to improve people’s shopping experience in order to deliver greater consumer and business values. One key objective is to keep the shoppers internet-connected for seamless and informed shopping, and be offered with timely and relevant shopping ideas. Complementing the existing Point-Of-Sale (POS) system, a new retail in-store server supporting personal mobile devices or kiosks is emerging in the retail chains towards the objective. This paper introduces such an in-store server and its role in the overall retail architecture, with the main focus placed on the in-store offer presentation scheme for personalizable service. A lightweight keyword-based rule engine is proposed for selecting offers. A detailed rule processing flow and an efficient implementation for the engine are described. For the ease of reviewing presented offers on a limited display space of a wireless shopping device, an offers layout method which organizes presented offers with individual items is also suggested. The in-store server can lead to seamless multi-channel collaborative shopping.