Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Dwayne S Benefield

Randal Henne

Douglas Irvine

David Liu

Brian J Utter

Douglas Welzel

Jason Shaw

A data mining component collectively analyzes item acquisition histories of users of an electronic catalog of items to identify pairs of items that tend to be acquired sequentially. For each such item pair, the data mining component may also determine whether user acquisitions of the two items tend to be spaced apart in time by a characterizing time interval. In addition, the data mining component may calculate one or more conditional probability values reflective of the frequency with which users who acquire the first item in the pair acquire the second item after waiting for a particular interval of time. The item relationship data extracted by the data mining component may be displayed in the electronic catalog in association with corresponding catalog items to assist users in selecting items to acquire, and/or may be used to generate personalized item recommendations.

Data mining of user activity data to identify sequential item acquisition patterns

An interactive merchandising program includes two or more program segments that are organized in a series. Each program segment in the series includes at least one time-limited offer for sequential presentation to the customer. The customer is required to undertake some action with respect to each program segment without knowing the identity of offers in program segments yet to be presented. If an offer is accepted within the time limit of the offer, the merchandising program terminates and the customer's acceptance of the offer is processed. If the customer declines a presented offer, the offer is withdrawn. The merchandising program proceeds to the next program segment in which the customer is presented the next time-limited offer. In this manner, the customer is provided an interactive experience that invites considered decision-making on the part of the customer.

Interactive time-limited merchandising program and method for improved online cross-selling

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Issaquah, WA, United States of America

Dwayne S Benefield