Abstract: A consumer maintains control of certain personal information via the consumer's decision to create, store and offer a retailer conditional access to certain portions of the consumer's identifying information. The consumer is able to set individualized conditions of how access may be acquired and in view of what exchange or offers the consumer wishes to see from the retailer. Upon the retailer's agreement to such conditions, a retailer may be provided access to certain portions of the consumer's identifying information. The retailer and consumer may also enter into an electronic negotiation if there is initial disagreement as to preferred terms in order to adequately value and assess one another's offers in view of the exchange. In so doing, a retailer is able to gain information and characteristics of retail activity from the consumer, and a consumer is able to be rewarded from the retailer for the value of the information provided.

Abstract: A method and system that provides for the automatic identification of complementary retail items, based upon a selection of specific characteristics of a consumer's shopping pattern or history, is provided. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system that provides for a methodological analysis of selected shopping characteristics in relation to recognition of specific shopping patterns and/or purchased item relationships with customer-specific identified complementary items, and the automated generation and identification of product preferences and purchasing patterns specific to a select consumer. Additionally the present invention is readily used with point of sale (POS) terminals, kiosks and retail-based computer systems.

Abstract: A system and method for tracking purchasing habits includes receiving in a computer system for a store, a shopping list including a product. The shopping list comes from a consumer and is independent of an inventory for the store. The store records a purchase by the consumer and compares the purchase to the product on the shopping list.

Abstract: Aspects for providing a multi-platform POS (point-of-sale) device driver architecture are described. The aspects include binding an API layer and a transport layer of a POS system with a driver stack, the driver stack supporting multiple platforms, multiple connectivities, and multiple APIs of the POS system.