Shopping scouts web site for rewarding customer referrals on product and price information with rewards scaled by the number of shoppers using the information

Abstract

A web site on the world-wide-web allows users to search a product/price database. The database contains product and price information for a wide variety of products from many different suppliers such as online and offline stores. Information in the database is collected and corrected by submitting users who are rewarded for product submissions. A submitting user inputs data on new product, price, supplier, or rating information using an online form. The user highlights coordinates of the model, make, and price on the supplier's web page, so that automated software can later check the supplier's web page for price and product updates. The submitting user is rewarded for submitting product and price information. When other consumer-users search the database and find the product, the submitting user is again rewarded. When these other consumer-users follow a link to the supplier's web page for that product, the submitting user is further rewarded. Thus future rewards depend on the number of consumer-users viewing the information submitted. Higher rewards are granted for more popular products. Correcting-users can correct errors when viewing the supplier's web page by pressing a correct-error button. The correcting user is rewarded and future rewards are shared among the submitting user and the correcting user as consumer-users view the corrected information.