Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to on-line transactions, and more particularly, to techniques for facilitating on-line gifting.
Related Art
Recent advances in the fields of telecommunications and integrated circuits have drastically increased the popularity of portable electronic telecommunication devices. As some non-limiting example, these portable telecommunication devices may include smart phones, computer tablets, or laptops. Users of these devices may use them to perform a variety of tasks. For example, many smart phones and computer tablets can be used to scan a product at a store and extract information about such product. The extracted information may include the description of the product, names of other retailers (either online or physical) carrying the product, prices of the product at the other retailers, and other suitable information. These capabilities of the portable telecommunication devices have not, however, been fully utilized to create a better shopping experience for their users who may be shopping at a brick and mortar store or on-line.
Furthermore, physical shopping at brick and mortar stores has some advantages over on-line shopping. For instance, a shopper who is looking for a gift for another person can purchase an item and request a gift receipt at the register. The gift receipt is usable by the recipient of the gift to return the gift and either exchange the gift for another item, get store credit, or get cash value. The gift receipt allows the giver to shop knowing that, should the giver pick an unwanted item, the recipient can still benefit from the full return value of the item. One on-line technique to approximate this transaction includes a send-as-a-gift option from Amazon™, which allows a user to send a physical item as a gift, but the physical world process is more efficient and easy. For instance, a recipient of a gift in this on-line process who desires to return the gift must physically return the gift, wait for the credit to be processed then select something else. It takes several days for the whole process to complete, and it is not done in the same store visit. On-line gifting could benefit from efficiency and ease.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds