Surprise refund after checkout

Cross-reference to related applications

This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2016-0120107 filed with the Korean Intellectual Property Office on Sep. 20, 2016, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

Technical field

The present invention relates to a method, apparatus and system for providing random additional post-payment discount in electronic commercial transaction or e-commerce in an open market, and more particularly, to a method, apparatus and system for providing random additional discount of 1 to 100% of the initial payment amount after the purchase price has been paid when you select one or more products (hereinafter, goods and services will be collectively referred to as ‘products’) for purchase in an online open market where virtual sales space is offered to unspecified number of sellers.

Background

With the development of Internet technology, online electronic commerce or online shopping has been growing rapidly and the scale of the transactions is continuously expanding. The online shopping platforms can be broadly divided into personal shopping mall, general shopping mall and open market.

The online shopping platform which has recently been bigger and become a hot spot is an open market which provides a virtual sales space to unspecified number of sellers. The operator of the open market receives sales commission from the seller in exchange for selling the online market space.

From the perspectives of the operator of the open market and the sellers who sells their own products in the open market, the key to the business is the marketing that can maximize their sales. While various marketing programs are applied for sales maximization, the most popular one is a discount coupon.

In a discount coupon event, the seller usually accepts the reduction in profit due to the discount, or both the seller and the open market operator share the loss in profit at a predetermined rate. Therefore, in order to prevent the deterioration in their profit rate, the event period should be selected as a short term and the amount of discount must be properly controlled.

In this situation, you cannot offer a discount coupon event every day for 365 days nor you can offer a discount of at least 1 to 100% of the buyer's purchase amount. This is because the seller must be guaranteed his or her own cost and margin in the sales and the open market operator must receive the transaction fee or sales commission within the sales amount as his or her income.

In order to promote the overall sales in the electronic commerce, Korean Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-2005-0101115 (Laid-Open on Oct. 20, 2005) discloses an idea of providing a discount coupon of about 50%, for example, of the sales amount and lowering the discount rate every time a predetermined period is over. However, there have been some problems in that the buyer could not use the discount coupon at the time of the purchase, the buyer could use the discount coupon only if the buyer with the discount coupon buys another product, and there was no measure to make up for the considerable loss of the seller due to the discount.

Summary

The present invention has been proposed in the background as described above, and it is a purpose of the present invention to provide a virtual sales space on-line for an unspecified number of sellers when a buyer selects one or more products and purchases the products, and provide a method, apparatus, and system for increasing the purchasing desire of the buyer by providing an additional discount at random from 1% to 100% based on the payment amount that the buyer has paid.

In addition, it is another purpose of the present invention to provide a method, apparatus and system wherein the seller can secure his or her own profits even when finally paid price is less than the cost of the product and even if it is sold at 100% discount or free of charge, since the open market operator, not the seller, supports the fund for the random additional discount based on the sales commission paid by the seller according to the sales of the product.

Further, it is another purpose of the present invention to provide a method, apparatus, and system capable of maximizing the sales of sellers without burdening the additional cost of the seller even if the random additional discount event is continuously performed 365 days a year.

Still further, it is another purpose of the present invention to provide a method, apparatus and system wherein the open market operator can secure his or her own profit with a paid membership fee regardless of the discount amount for the random additional discount, since the open market operator provides the random additional discount service to the paid member buyer and/or the paid member seller.

Still further, it is another purpose of the present invention to provide a method, apparatus and system wherein the buyer's desire to purchase is increased by displaying the amount of financial source for the random additional discount service in total and range of each random additional discount to the buyer in the open market, and the buyer can purchase the product at a substantially lower price even though the membership fee is required for the registration of the buyer.

Still further, it is another purpose of the present invention to provide a method, apparatus and system that induce the buyer, seller and the open market operator to trade in a more advantageous and more stable environment through the condition of guaranteeing profit through paid membership and random additional discount service within the range of the sales commission. Technical Solution

In order to accomplish the above-mentioned purposes, some embodiments of the present invention provides a random additional discount apparatus for receiving at least one random additional discount target product from a seller terminal, receiving a random additional discount request from a buyer terminal upon payment for a purchase of the product and providing a random additional discount price to the buyer terminal in response to the random additional discount request,

wherein the apparatus is configured to: extract a random additional discount amount in response to the random additional discount request; determine whether the extracted random additional discount amount satisfies a predetermined condition; transmit the random additional discount price determined by the random additional discount amount satisfying the predetermined condition to the buyer terminal; and repeat the process of extracting a new random additional discount amount and determining whether the new random additional discount amount satisfies the predetermined condition, and

wherein the predetermined condition that the determined random additional discount amount D.sub.i should satisfy is ΣC.sub.k−ΣD.sub.k≥0,

when M sellers sell products on the open market the total result of product sales by the M seller for a predetermined period of time is summarized as follows: R .sub.T =ΣR .sub.1 +ΣR .sub.2 + . . . ΣR .sub.k + . . . +ΣR .sub.M

(Here, ΣR.sub.k=sales revenue of the seller k, R.sub.T=total sales revenue of all the M sellers); C .sub.T =ΣC .sub.1 +ΣC .sub.2 + . . . ΣC .sub.k + . . . +ΣC .sub.M

(Here, ΣC.sub.k=sales commission received from the seller k, C.sub.T=total sales commission received from all the M sellers); D .sub.T =ΣD .sub.1 +ΣD .sub.2 + . . . ΣD .sub.k + . . . +ΣD .sub.M

(Here, ΣD.sub.k=discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the product of the seller k, DT=total discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the products of all the M sellers).

In addition, another embodiment of the present invention provides a random additional discount apparatus for receiving at least one random additional discount target product from a seller terminal, receiving a random additional discount request from a buyer terminal upon payment for a purchase of the random additional discount target product and providing a random additional discount price to the buyer terminal in response to the random additional discount request,

wherein the apparatus is configured to: extract a random additional discount amount in response to the random additional discount request; determine whether the extracted random additional discount amount satisfies a predetermined condition; transmit the random additional discount price determined by the random additional discount amount satisfying the predetermined condition to the buyer terminal; and repeat the process of extracting a new random additional discount amount and determining whether the new random additional discount amount satisfies satisfies the predetermined condition, and

wherein the predetermined condition that the determined random additional discount amount D.sub.i should satisfy is C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥0, when M sellers sell products on the open market the total result of product sales by the M seller for a predetermined period of time is summarized as follows: R .sub.T =ΣR .sub.1 +ΣR .sub.2 + . . . ΣR .sub.k + . . . +ΣR .sub.M

(Here, ΣR.sub.k=sales revenue of the seller k, R.sub.T=total sales revenue of all the M sellers); C .sub.T =ΣC .sub.1 +ΣC .sub.2 + . . . ΣC .sub.k + . . . +ΣC .sub.M

(Here, ΣC.sub.k=sales commission received from the seller k, C.sub.T=total sales commission received from all the M sellers); D .sub.T =ΣD .sub.1 +ΣD .sub.2 + . . . ΣD .sub.k + . . . +ΣD .sub.M

(Here, ΣD.sub.k=discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the product of the seller k, D.sub.T=total discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the products of all the M sellers).

The predetermined condition that the determined random additional discount amount Di should satisfy is C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥0 and ΣC.sub.k−ΣD.sub.k≥0, wherein, if C.sub.k−D.sub.k<0 then it is determined whether the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is satisfied; if the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is satisfied then the determined random additional discount price is transmitted to the buyer terminal; if the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is not satisfied then the process of extracting a new random additional discount amount and determining whether the new random additional discount amount satisfies the above conditions is repeated; and

M.sub.TH is the threshold margin of the open market operator for the sales of products of all the M sellers for the predetermined period.

The total amount of the discount subsidy that will be applied to the random additional discount service is displayed on the buyer terminal.

In addition, a further embodiment of the present invention provides a random additional discount method provided by a random additional discount apparatus for receiving at least one random additional discount target product from a seller terminal, receiving a random additional discount request from a buyer terminal upon payment for a purchase of the random additional discount target product and providing a random additional discount price to the buyer terminal in response to the random additional discount request,

wherein the method comprises: receiving from the seller terminal the seller information and at least one random additional discount target product for registration; receiving from the buyer terminal the buyer information and payment completion information for a product to purchase; in response to the payment completion information, transmitting at least one random additional discount price to the buyer terminal; and receiving from the buyer terminal a purchase decision,

wherein the transmitting further comprises: extracting a random additional discount amount; determining whether the extracted random additional discount amount satisfies a predetermined condition; when the determined random additional discount amount satisfies the predetermined condition, transmitting the determined random additional discount price to the buyer terminal; and when the determined random additional discount amount does not satisfy the predetermined condition, repeating the steps of extracting a new random additional discount amount, determining whether the new random additional discount amount satisfies the predetermined condition and transmitting the determined new random additional discount price satisfying the predetermined condition to the buyer terminal, and

wherein the predetermined condition that the determined random additional discount amount D.sub.i should satisfy is C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥0,

wherein, when M sellers sell products on the open market the total result of product sales by the M seller for a predetermined period of time is summarized as follows: R .sub.T =ΣR .sub.1 +ΣR .sub.2 + . . . ΣR .sub.k + . . . +ΣR .sub.M

(Here, ΣR.sub.k=sales revenue of the seller k, R.sub.T=total sales revenue of all the M sellers); C .sub.T =ΣC .sub.1 +ΣC .sub.2 + . . . ΣC .sub.k + . . . +ΣC .sub.M

(Here, ΣC.sub.k=sales commission received from the seller k, C.sub.T=total sales commission received from all the M sellers); D .sub.T =ΣD .sub.1 +ΣD .sub.2 + . . . ΣD .sub.k + . . . +ΣD .sub.M

(Here, ΣD.sub.k=discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the product of the seller k, D.sub.T=total discount subsidy provided by the open market operator for the sales of the products of all the M sellers).

The predetermined condition that the determined random additional discount amount D.sub.i should satisfy is C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥0 and ΣC.sub.k−ΣD.sub.k≥0,

wherein, if C.sub.k−D.sub.k<0 then it is determined whether the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is satisfied;

if the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is satisfied then the determined random additional discount price is transmitted to the buyer terminal; if the condition C.sub.T−D.sub.T≥M.sub.TH is not satisfied then the process of extracting a new random additional discount amount and determining whether the new random additional discount amount satisfies the above conditions is repeated; and

M.sub.TH is the threshold margin of the open market operator for the sales of products of all the M sellers for the predetermined period.

The total amount of the discount subsidy that will be applied to the random additional discount service is displayed on the buyer terminal.

The random additional discount method further comprises: after receiving the payment completion information, transmitting a random additional discount request mark to the buyer terminal, and the random additional discount request from the buyer terminal is implemented by the selection of the random additional discount request mark by the buyer terminal.

The random additional discount price is between 1% and 100% of the initial price of the product contained in the payment completion information.

The transmitting of the random additional discount price further comprises: in response to the random additional discount request, transmitting a first random additional discount price to the buyer terminal; receiving again the random additional discount request from the buyer terminal; and transmitting a second random additional discount price to the buyer terminal, and

the receiving of the purchase decision from the buyer terminal further comprises: receiving the purchase decision corresponding to one of the first and second random additional prices. Advantageous Effects

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus and system to provide a virtual sales space on-line for an unspecified number of sellers when a buyer selects one or more products and purchases the products, and to increase the purchasing desire of the buyer by providing an additional discount at random from 1% to 100% based on the payment amount that the buyer has paid.

According to other aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus and system wherein the seller can secure his or her own profits even when finally paid price is less than the cost of the product and even if it is sold at 100% discount or free of charge, since the open market operator, not the seller, supports the fund for the random additional discount based on the sales commission paid by the seller according to the sales of the product.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus, and system capable of maximizing the sales of sellers without burdening the additional cost of the seller even if the random additional discount event is continuously performed 365 days a year.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus and system wherein the open market operator can secure his or her own profit with a paid membership fee regardless of the discount amount for the random additional discount, since the open market operator provides the random additional discount service to the paid member buyer and/or the paid member seller.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus and system wherein the buyer's desire to purchase is increased by displaying the amount of financial source for the random additional discount service in total and range of each random additional discount to the buyer in the open market, and the buyer can purchase the product at a substantially lower price even though the membership fee is required for the registration of the buyer.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method, apparatus and system that induce the buyer, seller and the open market operator to trade in a more advantageous and more stable environment through the condition of guaranteeing profit through paid membership and random additional discount service within the range of the sales commission.

Brief description of the drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a system for providing random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is flowchart of a method for providing random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an apparatus for providing random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention.

Description of embodiments

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. Although the present invention has been described with reference to some embodiments of the present invention, the scope of the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments. For the sake of clarity, the detailed description for insignificant part of the present invention may be omitted, and the same reference numerals will be given to the same components throughout the specification, if available.

It is to be understood that when an element is referred to as “comprising” in the specification and claims it does not exclude the other elements unless specifically stated otherwise.

In addition, operations performed in a plurality of separately described servers or terminals may be performed in an integrated single or a few server(s) or terminal(s), and such changes may be freely performed by those skilled in the art.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention.

In case of a typical open market, an open market operator 10 provides the open market as an online shopping place to both the seller 30 and the buyer 20 , and the entity who sells products in the open market is the seller 30 . Although the buyer 20 pays the price of product on the open market website operated by the open market operator 10 , the entity who sells the product is not the open market operator 10 but the seller 30 since the open market operator 10 and the seller 30 perform a financial settlement afterwards including calculation of sales commission due to the sales of the product. Further, it is also the seller 30 who provides a discount to the buyer 20 when selling the products for promotion of sales.

However, in the random additional post-payment discount according to some embodiments of the present invention, the entity who provides a random additional discount is the open market operator 10 . The basic concept of the random additional post-payment discount of the present invention is that, after the buyer 20 has paid the product in a normal manner in the open market website, the open market operator 10 provides an additional discount opportunity to the buyer 20 with a discount rate at random between 1% and 100% on the initial payment amount of the product and the buyer 20 cancels the initial payment and makes the payment again for the same product at a discounted price according to rate of the random additional post-payment discount. This re-payment process can be implemented in various forms, which will be explained in detail later.

Referring to FIG. 1 , when a buyer 20 makes an initial payment to buy a product at step S 10 , the open market operator 10 provides a random additional discount at a random rate selected between 1% to 100% of the initial price, i.e., 50% at step S 20 , and the buyer 20 makes the payment again at a discounted price which is 50% lower than the initial price of the same product at step S 30 . Finally, the seller 30 and the open market operator 10 perform a financial settlement between themselves for the total amount of payments that have been made for the seller's products for a predetermined period of time at step S 40 .

In another embodiment, if a 20% discount has been applied to an original price of a product by a seller 30 , the discounted price given by the seller 30 would also be the initial price and the buyer 20 would make an initial payment at the initial price which is 80% of the original price to buy the initially discounted product at step S 10 . Then, the open market operator 10 would give a random additional post-payment payment discount of 50% of the initial price at step S 20 and the buyer 20 would make a re-payment for the same product at a discount price which is 40% lower than the original price of the product at step 30 . At last, the seller 30 and the open market operator 10 would proceed with a financial settlement between themselves for the total amount of payments that have been made for the products of that seller 30 for a predetermined period of time at step S 40 .

Here, the initial discount of 20% of the original price is a conventional discount amount given by the seller 30 at the cost of the reduction in the seller's profit. The additional discount of 50% of the initial price is a different discount amount given by the open market operator 10 at the cost of the reduction in the open market operator's profit. The initial discount of 20% is not included in the random additional discount given by the open marker operator 10 of the present invention. Therefore, the random additional discount means an additional discount given by the open market operator 10 to the basic price or the initial price, where the basic price or the initial price offered by the seller 30 is a selling price given to the buyer 20 after applying all the seller's own discount plan to the product.

In FIG. 1 , the ‘additional discount’ or ‘random additional discount’ is implemented by the buyer's first payment at the initial price by cash or credit card and the buyer's second payment at discounted price due to the random additional discount after cancelling the first payment. Otherwise, the buyer's confirmation of purchase to pay for the product at the initial price may be regarded as the first payment and then the buyer's real payment at discounted price due to the random additional discount will be regarded as the second payment. In this case, the real payment for product with cash or credit card is done only once. Further, after the first real payment for product, an amount of points equal to the discounted amount due to random additional discount may be provided to the buyer and the buyer may cancel the first payment and make a second payment using the points at a discounted price. The concept of random additional post-payment discount of the present invention covers all the above cases.

It will be understood by those skilled in the art that various forms of the first and second payments can be applied to the respective embodiments described without departing from the scope of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of random additional post-payment system according to some embodiment of the present invention.

The overall environment of FIG. 2 comprises a random additional discount system 100 connected via a conventional network such as Internet to a plurality of buyer terminals 200 , a plurality of seller terminals 300 and payment gateway PG 400 .

The random additional discount system 100 comprises a buyer management server 110 , a seller management server 120 , a random additional discount server 130 , a payment management server 140 , a settlement management server 150 , and an open market web server 160 . Where functions required to implement the random additional discount are provided to a conventional open market operation system, then the open market operation system can be regarded as a random additional discount system 100 of the present invention.

Herein, the number of terminals and servers are illustrated only for explanation and the plurality of terminals or servers may be physically replaced with a single integrated terminal or server, respectively. Even when a single terminal or server is depicted, it does not exclude the use of a plurality of terminals and servers. Thus, it is to be understood that some part of the functions or components described in the following description may be implemented by being integrated with other server or component without departing from the scope of the present invention.

First, each buyer terminal 200 is used to register the buyer in the buyer management server 110 of the random additional discount system 100 through a membership joining procedure including an agreement to pay a predetermined monthly fee to the open market operator. The buyer terminal 200 may search the product to buy in the open market web server 160 and make payment for the purchase of the product. Since the buyers are preferably paid members who pay monthly membership fee the basic income and cost of the open market operator can be covered by the paid membership fee. Thus, the basic income and cost of the open market operator may not be affected by the discount subsidies for random additional discount provided to the buyers.

In the real-time random additional discount service according to some embodiments of the present invention, the grade of the paid member may be designated in consideration of the amount of monthly paid fee, the payment status, the total purchase amount, and other usage status of the paid member. By adjusting the range of the discount rate of the random additional discount according to the grade of the membership, it is possible to provide a differentiated service so that the higher discount rate is presented to the high-graded member. In such a case, differentiated service details for each customer are registered in the buyer management server 110 , and the random additional discount service for each customer is performed accordingly.

Each seller terminal 300 is used to register the seller in a seller management server 120 of the random additional discount system 100 through a predetermined procedure including an agreement to pay a sales commission to the open market operator based on the sales of the product. The seller terminal 300 may register product information such as basic information, images and other sales conditions of the target product for random additional discount in the open market web server 160 and/or the seller management server 120 .

According to some embodiments, the seller may be a paid seller member who has agreed to pay a monthly fee, in such case, the basic income and cost of the open market operator is covered by the paid membership fee from the buyer member and the seller member and they are not affected by discount subsidies for random additional discounts offered to the buyer.

When the open market is a dedicated random additional discount open market providing random additional discount services for all the products, all the products registered by the seller terminal 300 become random additional discount target products. However, when a random additional discount corner is operated as a special section of the conventional open market, the seller terminal 300 can distinguish the random additional discount target product from other sales products and register the products in different sections of the open market web server 120 .

In some cases, the seller terminal 300 may be allowed to set a random additional discount period for the products, the expected sales for that period, and the range of a random additional discount rate to be presented to the buyer. However, in order to do this, it is necessary for the seller to share the financial burden due to the random additional discount with the open market operator by using the settlement management server 150 , or the seller must be registered with the seller management server 120 as a high-graded seller and be granted such setting authority from the open market operator.

The payment gateway, PG 400 means an electronic payment agent server. In some embodiments of the present invention, the PG 400 comprises all kinds of servers in the payment gateway corporation which performs or proceeds with electronic payments in connection with the seller terminal 300 , the seller's POS (Point of Sales) system, the payment management server 140 and/or external financial institutions at the time of electronic payment at the buyer's terminal 200 using the buyer's credit card or other payment means of the buyer in the online or offline market. Here, the external financial institution preferably includes credit card companies, banks, communication companies, and escrow companies so that the electronic payment accommodate various payment means such as credit card, account transfer, virtual account, payment using mobile phone and escrow service.

When the buyer requests a payment at a random additional discount price, the PG 400 connects the seller terminal 300 , the seller's POS (point of sale) system (not shown), the payment management server 140 and/or the external financial institution (not shown) to proceed with the electronic payment. The PG 400 interoperates with the payment management server 140 to support the buyer and/or seller so that they can re-pay the same product at a random additional discount price after the initial payment.

The random additional discount system 100 includes a buyer management server 110 , a seller management server 120 , a random additional discount server 130 , a payment management server 140 , a settlement management server 150 , and open market web server 160 .

The buyer management server 110 provides, in cooperation with the open market web server 160 , a web page for the registration and the management of the buyer who intends to purchase the product using a random additional discount service, and manages the registered buyer's personal information, payment information, purchase information, grade, and the like.

To this end, the buyer management server 110 can store various data necessary for operation into a buyer management DB. The buyer management DB stores various data required for performing electronic commerce activities and measuring e-commerce usage in the open market including, but not limited to, personal information for each buyer (a corporate information when the buyer is a corporation), payment information, grade information, monthly fee information, point information and coupon information for each buyer.

The payment information for each buyer means the details of the payment made by a buyer in the open market. The grade information for each buyer means a user grade or a user rating set by the random additional discount system 100 according to the open market usage status of the buyer. The point information is the point information paid to each buyer through the random additional discount when the random additional discount amount is provided in the form of point payment. The coupon information is the information of the coupon paid to the buyer, coupon usage status information, and the information of the additional coupon paid to the buyer according to the coupon usage status.

The seller management server 120 provides a web page for registration and management of the seller who intends to sell the product using a random additional discount service in association with the open market web server 160 . The web page is also use for registering and managing the product. The seller management server 120 manages the personal/corporate information and other information regarding payment, sales, grade, sales commission, and the like of each seller member.

To this end, the seller management server 120 can store various data necessary for operation into a seller management DB. The seller management DB stores various data required for performing electronic commerce activities and measuring e-commerce usage in the open market including, but not limited to, personal/corporate information, payment information, grade information, monthly fee information, point information, coupon information and event/promotion information for each seller.

The payment information for each seller refers to the payment history information of the seller's products sold in the open market. The grade information for each seller indicates a user grade or a user rating set by the random additional discount system 100 according to the open market usage status of the seller. The point information of each seller is the point information due to the random additional discount on the products of each seller when the random additional discount amount is provided in the form of point payment. The coupon information of each seller includes information of the coupons given by the seller and coupon usage status information of the given coupons.

The seller may purchase the product as a buyer in the open market. In this case, the purchase information of the seller is stored in the buyer management DB. In the case where the buyer DB and the seller DB are not strictly separated according to the structure of the database, the information as buyer and seller for each individual or corporation may be managed as one DB.

The random additional discount management server 130 can communicate with the buyer terminal 200 in cooperation with the open market web server 160 in order to select a discount rate of, for example, 1% to 100% for the product that the buyer has paid for at an initial price (that is, the original or self-discounted price offered by the seller) and determine a discounted amount due to the random additional discount.

To this end, the random additional discount server 130 automatically calculates a random additional discount price discounted at a predetermined ratio or a predetermined amount with respect to the initial price of the product in response to the completion of the initial payment for the product by the buyer terminal 200 . Alternatively, once payment is completed by the buyer terminal 200 , the random additional discount server 130 provides the buyer terminal 200 with a predetermined random additional discount request mark (e.g., a button, a link or an advertisement, etc.) requesting a random additional discount. If there is a random additional discount request (e.g., button click, etc.) from the buyer, a random additional discount price may be presented to the buyer terminal 200 in response thereto.

For example, if a discount rate of 100% is selected and the random additional discount price is determined to be free, the buyer can purchase the product free of charge and the buyer terminal 200 only transmits the purchase confirmation to the payment management server 140 .

According to some embodiments, a random additional discount server 130 may provide a new random additional discount request mark together with a random additional discount price, and if the buyer is not satisfied with the random additional discount price, he or she may request another random discount request using the random additional discount request mark. In response to the buyer's request for another random additional discount, the random additional discount server 130 may present again the modified random additional discount price to the buyer terminal 200 .

In this way, the buyer can repeatedly request a random additional discount as many as a predetermined number for random additional discounts. At this time, the final purchase price may be the final random additional discount price, or it may be a price selected by the buyer among the initial price and the subsequently presented random additional discount prices. Of course, when it is not possible to provide a further random additional discount service in response to the repeated random additional discount request from the buyer, the random additional discount server 130 transmits a relevant message to the buyer terminal 200 .

Meanwhile, according to some embodiments of the present invention, when a grade is given for each seller registered in the seller management server 120 , or when a grade is given for each buyer registered in the buyer management server 110 , the random additional discount server 130 may inquire the buyer management server 110 and/or the seller management server 120 to determine different discount rates according to the grade of the buyer and/or seller and then present the different additional discount rates to each buyer or to the products of each seller in response to the random additional discount request from the buyer terminal 200 .

The random additional discount management server 130 may limit the final purchase price as the first random additional discount price or limit the number of random additional discount requests. In this case, the random additional discount management server 130 may allow the buyer to purchase a random additional discount item that increases the number of opportunities for random additional discounts. Such a random additional discount item may be purchased for a fee by the buyer terminal 200 , or alternatively it may be provided to the buyer as a prize of a promotional event provided by the open market operator.

According to some embodiments of the present invention, the number of the opportunities for random additional discounts may be set by the seller in advance with respect to his or her products and registered in the seller management server 120 , and the random additional discount server 130 refers to the seller management server 120 to perform the random additional discount for those products.

For this, the random additional discount server 130 may store various data necessary for operation into a random additional discount DB. The random additional discount DB includes, but not limited to, random additional discount price calculation algorithm used for determining the random additional discount price, grade information for each seller, grade information for each buyer, random additional discount mark information, random additional discount coupon information, information on the number of opportunities for random additional discount, random addition discount target product information, open market promotion/event information, random additional discount history information for each buyer and seller.

The description continues in the full USPTO document.