SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is investigating the creation of a single multi-dimensional score that accurately predicts the preference of a consumer within an electronic commerce environment, allowing the owner of the electronic commerce environment to deliver personalized content. The intellectual merit of the proposed innovation is the aggregation of actual consumer consumption behavior from a variety of ecommerce domains to form a holistic view of the consumer and create a highly predictive model to predict the content or offer that is most likely to elicit a desirable consumer response. The broader social implication for the proposed innovation is to positively impact those engaged in electronic commerce (consumers and providers). Consumers will benefit by receiving highly personalized content and offers that is relevant to their actual consumption patterns which improves their interaction or experience and removes unwanted or irrelevant content. This experience change positively influence consumers' satisfaction and loyalty to the ecommerce provider. The ecommerce provider benefits from increased satisfaction and participation on behalf of their customers which translates into short and long term economic value. If successful, the project could provide a framework from which to build additional value-added service products and have significant commercial impact

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project involves the examination of consumer consumption behavior across multiple on-line domains to predict those items to be most likely consumed in the next interchange and the terms under which they will be consumed. The proposed innovation utilizes a persistent key technology to examine multiple attributes of identity to establish a unified identity that links individuals across multiple domains. Once linked the unified identity serves as the basis for the aggregation of consumption behavior (purchases, content, ads clicked through, invitations extended, etc.). The aggregated data establishes the consumer?s digital footprint and serves as the basis for creating highly-predictive models. The models analyze the actual consumption behavior to establish consumption propensity and terms of consumption on an industry segment level. The results of the propensity models will be returned to the client at the time of interaction to make up sell / cross sell offers that are most likely to result in action by the consumer. The result for the client is increased revenue for the transaction and the result for the consumer is increased satisfaction through the relevance of the offer. The broader impact of the proposed innovation involves three aspects: Accelerating economic expansion, identifying potential domestic terror threats and identifying potential on-line predatory activity. The ability for a retail or social network to identify the consumption preferences of their customers and offer those items during an interaction increases the likelihood that a customer will purchase the offered item due to its relevance. Such expansion of customer spending will assist organizations in increasing inventory turnover, improving sales and overall economic health. Identification of potential domestic terror threats through the examination of cross domain purchasing behavior of linked identities. Intelligence Services could establish purchase combinations that when combined could result in a potential treat and take appropriate early intervention action. Identification of potential on-line predators through the use of persistent key technology to highlight those individuals whose established identity on other domains is materially different from a current registration. This permits the organization to establish higher authentication requirements for those individuals and in so doing protecting itself and in the case of Social Media its members (specifically minors)