Patent application number | Description | Published |
20110082804 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR THE ANALYSIS OF PRICING DATA INCLUDING PRICING FLEXIBILITY FOR VEHICLES AND OTHER COMMODITIES - Embodiments disclosed herein can provide consumers with an effective tool for evaluating the negotiability of prices for vehicles in the marketplace. The tool may include a Price Flexibility Score which measures the elasticity of transaction prices by vehicle model. Specifically, a method may dynamically incorporate factors that affect price variance, convert those factors into variables, generate order statistics for each of the variables, apply a weighting factor to the variables to generate a price flexibility score for each make-model, and determine a negotiability index utilizing the price flexibility score. In one embodiment, the process of determining the negotiability index may be fully driven by a price flexibility model that incorporates a plurality of factors. | 04-07-2011 |
20130030870 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF USED VEHICLE PRICING DATA - Systems and methods for the aggregation, analysis, and display of data for used vehicles are disclosed. Historical transaction data for used vehicles may be obtained and processed to determine pricing data, where this determined pricing data may be associated with a particular configuration of a vehicle. The user can then be presented with an interface pertinent to the vehicle configuration utilizing the aggregated data set or the associated determined data where the user can make a variety of determinations. This interface may, for example, be configured to present the historical transaction data visually, with the pricing data such as a trade-in price, a list price, an expected sale price or range of sale prices, market low sale price, market average sale price, market high sale price, etc. presented relative to the historical transaction data. | 01-31-2013 |
20130226945 | NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT USEFUL FOR AUTOMOTIVE DATA MAPPING - Natural language processing (NLP) approaches may be utilized to map two strings. The strings may come from sources utilizing different naming conventions. One example may be a data aggregator that collects used car transaction information. Another example may be a comprehensive database listing all possible manufacturer-defined vehicle options. A NLP system may operate to determine whether a source string is present in a target string and outputting a match containing the source string and the target string if the source string is present in the target string or computing a similarity factor if the source string is not present in the target string. The similarity factor representing a measure of similarity between two strings may be computed based on a plurality of parameters, including a Levenshtein edit distance parameter. The computed similarity can be used to find pricing information, including trade-in, sale, and list prices, across disparate naming conventions. | 08-29-2013 |
20140114726 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF USED VEHICLE PRICING DATA - Systems and methods for the aggregation, analysis, and display of data for used vehicles are disclosed. Historical transaction data for used vehicles may be obtained and processed to determine pricing data, where this determined pricing data may be associated with a particular configuration of a vehicle. The user can then be presented with an interface pertinent to the vehicle configuration utilizing the aggregated data set or the associated determined data where the user can make a variety of determinations. This interface may, for example, be configured to present the historical transaction data visually, with the pricing data such as a trade-in price, a list price, an expected sale price or range of sale prices, market low sale price, market average sale price, market high sale price, etc. presented relative to the historical transaction data. | 04-24-2014 |
20140214491 | Out-the-Door Pricing System, Method and Computer Program Product Therefor - Embodiments provide consumers browsing and shopping online for durable goods such as new vehicles with out-the-door prices for user-specified vehicle configurations. A vehicle data system can obtain automotive registration data from various sources, identify true taxes versus fees, process them into separate groups, associate them to vehicle configurations, and persist the associated taxes and fees in a database. This backend process can be done offline, independent of a frontend process that services user requests in real time. A user request containing a user-specified vehicle configuration may be received by the vehicle data system through a website. The vehicle data system may determine an out-the-door price for the user-specified vehicle configuration, the out-the-door price representing a final amount that a consumer is to pay a dealer for the user-specified vehicle configuration and including applicable taxes and fees retrieved from the database. | 07-31-2014 |
20140214696 | Wholesale/Trade-In Pricing System, Method and Computer Program Product Therefor - Systems, methods and computer program products that determine wholesale prices for durable goods such as used vehicles. In one embodiment, a system includes a computer processor, a network interface, a data storage device, and an output device. The system collects and stores, via the network interface, historical sales information from external data sources. A retail price for a target vehicle is determined based on the collected information. Condition information for the vehicle is collected and used to adjust the retail price to arrive at a wholesale price, which is output to a user. The system may also adjust the price based on repair costs associated with identified vehicle conditions. The system may collect cost information associated with a wholesale sale transaction and deduct these costs and a profit margin from the wholesale price to produce a trade-in price. | 07-31-2014 |
20140222519 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR THE ANALYSIS OF PRICING DATA INCLUDING PRICING FLEXIBILITY FOR VEHICLES AND OTHER COMMODITIES - Embodiments disclosed herein can provide consumers with an effective tool for evaluating the negotiability of prices for vehicles in the marketplace. The tool may include a negotiability index which determines flexibility in vehicle pricing. Specifically, a method may obtain data from multiple sets of vehicle models, construct a price flexibility model to estimate an average price range for each set of models, determine a negotiability index using the average price range, and generate an interface to present the negotiability index. In one embodiment, the price flexibility model incorporates a plurality of factors. | 08-07-2014 |
20140279258 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETERMINING COST OF VEHICLE OWNERSHIP - Systems and methods for estimating the cost of vehicle ownership wherein, in one embodiment, a system includes a computer processor that is coupled to a network interface, a data storage device and an output device, the processor being configured to receive information identifying a user-specified vehicle of interest and interval of interest. The processor uses this information to identify and retrieve pre-calculated data items that are stored in the data storage device, and to request external data items from an external data source and receive the requested external data items via the network interface. The processor computes cost-of-vehicle-ownership (COVO) components for the vehicle of interest, sums the components to determine an overall COVO, and outputs the components and overall COVO to a user via the output device. The user may provide further input to modify the COVO calculation. | 09-18-2014 |
20140279263 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PROVIDING PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS - Systems, methods and computer program products for providing recommendations to consumers, where the recommendations are based on determinations of similarity between desired products and recommended products. In one embodiment, a system includes a server computer coupled to a network and a data store. The server computer receives from client devices user input that identifies the characteristics of a desired product. The data store contains a plurality of product listings. For each of a set of these listings, the server computer identifies characteristics of the listed product, and compares characteristics of the listed product to characteristics of the desired product. The server computer determines similarity measures for the individual characteristics, and determines an overall similarity score for the listed product based on the similarity measures for the individual characteristics. The server computer orders the listed products based on the similarity scores, and provides a recommendation output to the user. | 09-18-2014 |
20140279709 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETERMINING COSTS OF VEHICLE REPAIRS AND TIMES TO MAJOR REPAIRS - Systems, methods and computer program products for determining costs of vehicle repairs and times to major repairs. In one embodiment, a system includes a computer processor, a data storage device, and an output device. The processor receives information from a user identifying a vehicle of interest. The processor retrieves repair data items that have characteristics common to the vehicle of interest from a database stored in the data storage device. The processor determines repairs that are expected to be necessary for the vehicle of interest based on the retrieved repair data items, and determines the costs associated with the identified expected repairs. The processor provides output to the user indicating the repair costs and/or the times at which the repairs are likely to be necessary. The output may be in graphical and/or numerical form. | 09-18-2014 |