CONTINUITY DATA  
       [0001]     This application claims priority to Provisional Application 60/484,280 filed Jul. 3, 2003. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0002]     The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for facilitating electronic commerce. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for enhancing brand power and distribution channel relationships to satisfy online customers in electronic commercial transactions.  
         [0003]     Most conventional electronic commerce (e-commerce) environments operate similarly to traditional brick and mortar establishments. That is, a product is developed, manufactured and marketed by a branding company and delivered to distribution markets or e-stores for sale and distribution to the end purchaser. As used herein, a brand owner or branding company shall be given a broad meaning and shall include, but is not limited to, manufacturers of products, resellers, distributors, wholesalers, original equipment manufacturers, and customizers. Further, “brand” may comprise a single brand or line or products, a family of brands or multiple brands grouped together. Because many manufacturers lack the resources required to distribute their own products or they can&#39;t afford to alienate their distribution channel partners, they are forced to rely upon such a conventional multi-level system. Unfortunately, it is a rare e-tailer who only sells products from a particular brand or manufacturer. Accordingly, the very distribution channel partners which the manufacturers rely upon to sell their products are placing those products into a competitive or confusing environment which may result in lost sales to the manufacturer. Therefore, there is a need in the art of electronic commerce for more efficient and effective methods and systems for enabling manufacturers to market and sell their merchandise from their web site, while leveraging existing distribution partners, without the risk of alienating them, causing brand dilution in the minds of consumers, or incurring lost sales through retail-level competition and confusion.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0004]     The present invention overcomes the problems noted above and provides additional advantages through a system and method for enhancing brand power and distribution channel relationship to satisfy online customers. In particular, the present system creates a deep collection of products of corporate importance from across a network, e.g. a WAN, the Internet, and enables visitors at the organization&#39;s web site to find and purchase those products or goods through existing retail and other distribution channels. The network may be wired or wireless or a combination of such networks. Additionally, the highly customizable nature of the present invention enables the system to be delivered turnkey as a managed service, implemented without significant impact on the organization&#39;s technical operations or business processes. The invention also provides a seamless consumer experience for the visitor and streamlines the purchasing process.  
         [0005]     In one embodiment, the present invention provides an electronic communications network-based commerce system consisting of a plurality of user interface devices, at least one brand owner server computer, and a plurality of electronic merchant computer systems, each electronic merchant computer systems operable to supply information relating to and sell products of one or more brand owners. The commerce system also comprises a data center computer system communicatively coupled to the brand owner server computers and the electronic merchant computer systems for facilitating brand specific presentation and selection for purchase of products by a user through the user&#39;s interface device from the plurality of electronic merchant computer systems.  
         [0006]     Another embodiment of the present invention provides an electronic commerce system for use on a communications network that interconnects a plurality of user interface devices, at least one brand owner server computer, and a plurality of electronic merchant computer systems. Each of the electronic merchant computer systems is operable to supply information about and to sell products of one or more brand owners. In this embodiment, the electronic commerce system comprises a data center computer system communicatively coupled over the network to the at least one brand owner server computer and the electronic merchant computer systems for facilitating brand specific presentation and selection for purchase of products by a user through the user&#39;s interface device from the plurality of electronic merchant computer systems while the user accesses the at least one brand owner server computer with his interface device.  
         [0007]     Yet another embodiment of the present invention provides a method for presenting and selling brand specific goods to consumers from a plurality of sources over a communications network. In this embodiment, a product database is accessed which contains electronic links to products available for purchase over the communication network from a plurality of different electronic merchants and associates items in the product database with one or more product description fields. The method according to this embodiment also comprises specifying brand owner criteria for filtering products from said product database to present to a consumer in response to the consumer query for products of a particular brand. Finally, the method according to this embodiment comprises presenting products, including electronic links to purchase said presented products from at least one of said plurality of sources, selected from said product database based on said brand owner criteria and a consumer query, to the consumer over a communication device connected to said communications network.  
         [0008]     Yet an additional embodiment according to this invention provides a method for providing brand enhanced online shopping to patrons of a brand owners Internet website. The method according to this embodiment consists of the steps of creating a database of products offered from a plurality of e-commerce vendors over the Internet, applying a set of brand owner criteria to the products in the database, for products which meet the brand owner criteria, associating a site ID of the brand owner with those products, and in response to a user command to shop for products executed while on the Internet website of the brand owner, presenting a catalog of products which have the site ID of that brand owner and which correspond to a type of products requested by the user, including a link to purchase those products from their respective e-commerce vendor.  
         [0009]     Still a further embodiment according to this invention provides a method for enabling a consumer for to shop for and purchase a brand owner&#39;s goods from a plurality of different electronic merchants&#39; Internet websites through the brand owner&#39;s website. The method according to this embodiment is characterized by presenting a list of products to a consumer viewable with a browser software executed on an electronic device of the consumer while the consumer visits the brand owner&#39;s Internet website, wherein each product of said list includes a link to an electronic merchant website offering said product for sale and which satisfies one or more brand owner criteria, allowing a user to select at least one of said products from said list for purchase, and directing the consumer to the electronic merchant website associated with the selected product.  
         [0010]     Yet another embodiment according to this invention provides a computer readable storage medium containing computer readable instructions for causing a computer to execute a program for presenting and selling brand specific goods to a consumer from a plurality of sources over a communications network while the consumer accesses a brand owner computer over the network. This embodiment includes instructions for accessing a product database containing electronic links to products available for purchase over the communication network from a plurality of different sources said product characterized in said database by one or more product description fields, instructions for specifying brand owner criteria for filtering products from said product database to present to the consumer in response to a query by the consumer for products of a particular category, and instructions for presenting products, including electronic links to purchase said presented products, from said product database based on said brand owner criteria and the consumer query to a communication device of that consumer.  
         [0011]     One additional embodiment of this invention discloses a method for creating a product catalog comprising populating a product database containing products offered for sale by various electronic merchants over a communications network and associating products in the product database with product categories in a product catalog such that the product catalog contains products from a variety of different electronic merchants and such that the product catalog is operable to be queried to return products of a particular brand owner offered for sale by one or more of the variety of different electronic merchants. In a preferred embodiment the communications network is the Internet, the brand owner network server is a web server associated with the at least one brand owner and each at least one merchant server is a web server associated with a respective web-based merchant. According to this embodiment, the step of populating a product database comprises at least one of periodically receiving a data feed from one or more of the various electronic merchants, searching the Internet using a web crawler software to search for goods offered for sale from a variety of different online retailers, or obtaining data in real time from merchants using the web services protocol.  
         [0012]     Other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the invention. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0013]     The present invention can be understood more completely by reading the following Detailed Description of the invention, in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:  
         [0014]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating a distributed computer network incorporating the selective content electronic commerce system of the present invention;  
         [0015]      FIG. 2  is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a method for creating a selective content database of products for presentation to online consumers in accordance with at least one embodiment of this invention;  
         [0016]      FIG. 3  is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of the invention for providing selective content in an electronic commerce environment in accordance with at least one embodiment of this invention;  
         [0017]      FIG. 4  is a block diagram illustrating the invention as a system for establishing a customized product index in accordance with at least one embodiment of this invention; and  
         [0018]      FIG. 5  is a block diagram illustrating one embodiment of a software-based architecture resident on a data center computer system for enabling product selection, filtering, storage and retrieval in accordance with at least one embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
       [0019]     The system and method of the present invention described below, may be implemented by at least one interactive computer software system incorporated within a computer-readable medium such as a hard disk drive, an optical medium such as a compact disc, or other acceptable medium. In general, the inventive computer-based system includes multiple elements which together gather and format product information and, simultaneously, make the gathered products available to consumers for subsequent viewing/purchasing through existing distribution channels.  
         [0020]     Referring now to  FIG. 1 , there is shown one example of a computer-based system  100  for use with one embodiment of the present invention. In particular, a plurality of conventional processor-based client computer systems  102 , executing client browser applications, are connected typically through network service providers to a suitable computer network or networks  104 , e.g., the Internet.  
         [0021]     Each client computer system  102  may include, for instance, a personal computer or mobile device running the Microsoft Windows™ 95, 98, Millenium™, NT™, XP™, or 2000, Windows™ CE™, Windows Mobile™, PalmOS™, Unix, Linux, Solaris™, OS/2™, BeOS™, MacOS™ or any other suitable operating system or platform. Client system  102  may also include a microprocessor such as an Intel x86-based device, a Motorola 68K or PowerPC™ device, a MIPS, Hewlett-Packard Precision™, or Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) Alpha™ RISC processor, a microcontroller or other general or special purpose device operating under programmed control.  
         [0022]     In accordance with the present invention, a plurality of brand owner server computer systems  106  are also coupled typically through a network service provider to the either wireless and/or wired computer network  104 . Each of the server computer systems  106  may be, or include, for instance, a workstation running the Microsoft Windows™ NT™, Windows™ 2000, Windows™ XP™, Unix, Linux, Xenix, IBM AIX™, Hewlett-Packard UX™, Novell Netware™, Sun Microsystems Solaris™, OS/2™, BeOS™, Mach, Apache, OpenStep™ or other suitable operating system or platform. Further, each brand owner server computer system  106  typically executes a web server application to serve at least one, though typically many, web pages stored as files in HTML format and/or other formats. As is known in the art, each brand owner server computer system  106  may further include several individual server computers at various locations on the network.  
         [0023]     In accordance with the present invention, a plurality of e-merchant computer systems  110  are also coupled, typically through one or more network service providers to the communications network  104 . The e-merchant computer systems are similar in design to the brand owner server computer systems  106  in that they also typically execute a web server application serving one or more web pages viewable with a browser. Theses web pages usually include pictures and descriptions of products offered for sale. The products are typically categorized and may include products of a variety of different manufacturers/brand owners. The e-merchant computer server systems  110  also are typically enabled to facilitate secure online shopping transactions for the products featured on their web sites.  
         [0024]     In addition to typical brand owner server computer systems  106 , the system of the present invention also preferably includes at least one data center computer system  108  for storing and providing supporting data for relay through the server computer systems  106  to client systems  102 . In a preferred embodiment, it is the data center computer system  108  that provides the underlying functionality for collecting, filtering and disseminating the desired content originating from the E-merchant server computer systems  110  to the end consumers. Additional details regarding the operation and functions performed by the data center computer system will be set forth in additional detail below.  
         [0025]     As discussed above, in addition to the brand owner server computer system  106 , and the data center computer system  108 , there is also provided a plurality of retailer/distributor (E-merchant) server computer systems  110  provided for hosting the transaction-level processing related to the actual purchase. In operation, the retailer/distributor server computer systems  110  are connected to the data center computer system  108  for receiving user purchase requests initiated by user visitation to the web site hosted on the brand owner server computer systems  106 .  
         [0026]     In general operation, the client system  102  requests a display of a Web page stored on the brand owner server computer system  106  by issuing a URL request through the network  104  to the brand owner server computer system  106 . A URL consistent with the present invention may be a simple URL of the form: 
        &lt;protocol identifiers&gt;://&lt;server path&gt;/&lt;web page path&gt;       
 
         [0028]     A “protocol identifier” of “http” specifies the conventional hyper-text transfer protocol. A URL request for a secure Internet transaction typically utilizes the secure protocol identifier “https”, assuming that the client browser application and World Wide Web or Web server application are presumed to support and implement the secure sockets layer. The “server path” is typically of the form “prefix.domain,” where the prefix is typically “www” to designate a Web server and the “domain” is the standard Internet sub-domain.top-level-domain of the server computer system  106 . The optional “web page path” is provided to specifically identify a particular hyper-text page maintained by the Web server.  
         [0029]     In response to a received URL identifying an existing Web page, the brand owner server system  106  returns the Web page, subject to the HTTP protocol, to the client system  102  for display on the client system  102 . Additionally, in accordance with the present invention, the brand owner server computer system  106  may retrieve information associated with the user request from the at least one data center computer  108 . Alternatively, the server computer system  106  may also at some point, e.g., in response to a user receiver request, shift the user&#39;s connection to the data center computer system  108  or retailer/distributor server computer system  110 , thereby temporarily bypassing the server computer system  106 . In general, the web page(s) displayed typically incorporates both textual and graphical information including embedded hyper-text links that permit the user of client system  102  to readily select a next URL or send other data over the network  104 .  
         [0030]     Referring now to  FIG. 2 , there is shown a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a method for collecting selective content for dissemination to purchasers. Initially, in step  200 , an overall database of available products and merchants is created to service any potential brand owner. In one exemplary embodiment, the product database is created in an autonomous manner by electronic web crawler software that examines electronic retailer offerings and catalogs those offerings for subsequent retrieval in response to brand owner filtering requests. Alternatively, product information may be entered into the database manually or through any other suitable means. In another exemplary embodiments, data is entered into the database via periodic data feeds from the various electronic merchants. This embodiment is preferable to that of the web crawler because it reduces and/or eliminates the task of searching through unneeded information. In yet an additional embodiment, this information is obtained in real time directly from the various electronic merchants using the web services protocol. Additionally, product entries within the database include several discrete elements, including any categories or keywords associated with the product, the name of the product, the merchant offering the product, the price of the product, an image of the product, and a link to enable direct purchasing of the product from the associated merchant.  
         [0031]     Once the broad catalog/database of products has been established, it is then necessary to identify the criteria by which the realm of products may be selected for particular brand owners, in order to provide for e-commerce brand enhancement. Accordingly, in step  202 , product selection criteria is received from the brand owners. Such selection criteria may include any combination of product keywords, categories, merchants, etc., that together enable the identification of brand-specific products to be directed to the consumer. In step  204 , the collected products, as well as any additionally added products, are filtered in view of the product selection criteria established in step  202  to create a brand-specific subset of available products and merchants. In one embodiment, a site identification associated with the brand owner is appended to the product information if the product meets the specified product selection criteria. In this manner, only products including this site identification may be returned in response to product searches originating from the brand owner&#39;s web site.  
         [0032]      FIG. 4  is a block diagram illustrating one system for establishing a customized product index. A collection of products  400  is filtered by a filtering process  402  utilizing a site-filter document  404  containing the brand owner specified criteria. In one embodiment, such a site-filter document is created using extensible markup language (XML), however any suitable format could be utilized. One example of a site-filter XML document is attached to this application as Appendix A. Once the product index has been filtered, a collection of products and associated site identifications  406  are generated. Next, an indexer element  408  creates the end-index of available products  412  using a loader-configuration document  410 . One of the key aspects of the loader-configuration document is that it specifies the rules necessary to instruct the Indexer how to map products to appropriate product categories. As discussed above, such a loader-configuration document may be created using extensible markup language (XML), however any suitable format could be utilized. One example of a site-filter XML document is attached to this application as Appendix B.  
         [0033]     By including the site identification with the product entry in the broad product database, all brand owners may be serviced from a single collective database without the risk of non-complying products being featured and without requiring on-the-fly filtering at each product request. Once the products have been collected and filtered, they are ready for searching and selection by consumers visiting the brand owner&#39;s web site.  
         [0034]     Referring now to  FIG. 3 , there is shown a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a method for providing selective content in an electronic commerce environment. Initially, in step  300 , a user visits an organization&#39;s, such as a brand owner&#39;s, web site hosted on at least one server computer system associated with the organization. Next, in step  302 , the user selects a “shop” or other suitable option for initiating an electronic-commerce session with the organization. Then, in various exemplary embodiments, in step  304 , the user is transitioned to a data center computer system designed to facilitate the offering of brand enhanced products to the consumer. In one embodiment, the data center computer system is provided and maintained by a third party although such a scenario is not required in the present invention. Alternatively, the data center computer system may be maintained by the brand owner or an affiliate as part of its own server computer system.  
         [0035]     Next, in step  306 , an online shopping web page is displayed to the user featuring brand owner selected product offerings or merchants. In one embodiment, the brand owner selected product offerings are selected from various products maintained on the overall product database and including the site identification associated with the brand owner. Next, in step  308 , the data center computer system receives a user request to search for a particular product or range of products fulfilling submitted search criteria. In response to this request, in step  310 , the data center computer system, for example, utilizing search engine technology, retrieves products meeting the user&#39;s criteria and also including the site identification associated with the brand owner&#39;s web site. In step  312 , the results of the retrieval are displayed to the user for product selection and/or additional search.  
         [0036]     In step  314 , a purchase request for a particular product from a particular merchant is received from the user or customer. Next, in step  316 , in response to such a request, the data center computer system places an order for the desired product into the order entry system of the selected merchant. Then, in step  318 , the user is relayed (at least in part) to the order completion page of the particular merchant, with the selected product ready to be placed into the merchant&#39;s “shopping cart” system for that consumer. In this manner, users are able to search for and purchase brand-specific products without wading through a myriad of competing products and brands. Following order completion in step  320 , the user is returned to the brand owner&#39;s web site in step  322 .  
         [0037]     Referring now to  FIG. 5 , there is shown a block diagram illustrating one embodiment of a software-based architecture resident on the data center computer system  108  for enabling product selection, filtering, storage and retrieval in accordance with the present invention. In particular, the software architecture provides five generalized elements including a client-side element  500 , an alternative clients element  502 , an application server element  504 , a search engine/catalog element  506  and a database element  508 . Each of the elements operate together to provide for product filtering, database creation and search engine processes.  
         [0038]     More particularly, the client-side element  500  includes technology for interfacing the data center computer system with the end user client systems  102 . This technology includes one or more velocity templates  510  for enabling customization of layout and facilitating feature personalization. A default template can be maintained for those sites not needing a custom layout. The business delegates function as a pattern which is used to interface to various APIs. For example, if the services layer has to change interface the business delegates layer serves as an interface to the services layer for the client side  500 . The Struts layer is code developed and used as a gateway to call services. Struts actions provide a framework for actions such as logging. Only a few actions generate thousands of pages of content. Therefore, the struts actions are proprietary code which plugs into the struts framework allowing the client side to call business services. The struts servlets call actions. An action will generate and fill variables to pass to the velocity template. The velocity template looks similar to HTML code that reference variables from the struts servlet. The velocity template may be specific to a particular customer depending upon the look an functionality desired by the customer.  
         [0039]     The application server element  504  includes technology for interfacing between the client side element  500  and the search engine element  506 . In particular, the application server element  504  includes a channel access services layer  512  (e.g. Web Services, Messaging) for facilitating common communication between different protocols; a services layer  514  for calling components in the control layer; a control layer  516  for exposing fine-grained business services that can be used by other services in the control and service layers  516 ,  514 ; and a search adaptor layer  518  retrieving catalogs from a web service of a vendor or some other source besides a local search engine repository.  
         [0040]     The search engine element  506  includes a search engine layer  520  with a base catalog and one or more site catalog layers  522  each of which contain the products from a site&#39;s own inventory. These site catalogs  522  are not separate versions of the “base catalog” that have been filtered for keywords. Rather, they are special catalogs of goods specific to a particular brand owner that may also be searched in response to a consumer query. In various exemplary embodiments, the goods in these site catalogs may be goods not otherwise available from other brand-independent vendors. In contrast, the base catalog layer may serve more than one brand owner.  
         [0041]     The database element  508  includes an ARKDOM commerce affiliate database layer  524  (not shown) which contains site personalization information for both sites and end users. The persistence adaptors provide an interface to the various databases in the database element  508 . In various exemplary embodiments, the database element  508  may include one or more relational databases.  
         [0042]     While the foregoing description includes many details and specificities, it is to be understood that these have been included for purposes of explanation only, and are not to be interpreted as limitations of the present invention. Many modifications to the embodiments described above can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.  
                                                               APPENDIX A                                       &lt;site-filters&gt;             &lt;site name=“NFR” id=“265908626” /&gt;             &lt;site name=“Cotton Inc” id=“987179245”&gt;               &lt;include&gt;                &lt;keyword&gt;cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;jean&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;denim&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;corduroy&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;towel&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;T-shirt&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;men&#39;s dress shirt&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;chinos&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;khakis&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;sweats&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;sweatshirt&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;sweatpant&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;undergarment&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;underwear&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;lingerie&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;panties&lt;/keyword&gt;                    &lt;/include&gt;               &lt;exclude&gt;                &lt;category&gt;3&lt;/category&gt;           &lt;category&gt;57&lt;/category&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;Peter Cottontail&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cotton candy&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;Soft-as-cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cottonball jar&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cotton ball jar&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;not cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cotton like&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cotton-like&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cottony&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;than cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;comfort of cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;feel of cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;Poly/cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;polyester/cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;cotton jar&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;towel bar&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;towel rack&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;Rayure sleeveless&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;softness of cotton&lt;/keyword&gt;           &lt;keyword&gt;Linen/cotton jacket&lt;/keyword&gt;                    &lt;/exclude&gt;             &lt;/site&gt;           &lt;/site-filters&gt;                      
 
         [0043]    
       
         
               
             
           
               
                 APPENDIX B 
               
               
                   
               
               
                   
               
             
             
               
                 &lt;loader-config&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;catalogs&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;!-- 
               
               
                       Note that the names here need to match those 
               
               
                 in the &lt;category-mapping&gt;, 
               
               
                       otherwise products will be dropped. 
               
               
                     --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“23” 
               
               
                       name=“Kohls Department Stores” 
               
               
                       path=“src/examples/catalogs/kohls.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“24” 
               
               
                       name=“Linens &#39;n Things” 
               
               
                   path=“src/examples/catalogs/linensnthings.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“7” 
               
               
                       name=“Classic Closeouts” 
               
               
                   path=“src/examples/catalogs/classiccloseouts.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“31” 
               
               
                       name=“Pacific Sunwear” 
               
               
                   path=“src/examples/catalogs/pacificsunwear.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;hanes id=“29” 
               
               
                       name=“One Hanes Place” 
               
               
                       path=“src/examples/catalogs/ohpprod.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“22” 
               
               
                       name=“Jos A Bank” 
               
               
                       path=“src/examples/catalogs/josabank.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;performics id=“13” 
               
               
                       name=“ExOfficio” 
               
               
                       path=“src/examples/catalogs/exofficio.txt” /&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;/catalogs&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;!-- 
               
               
                     Product Modifications 
               
               
                   --&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;modifiers&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;required fields=“name, url, imageUrl, sku” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;duplicates history=“10” fields=“name, url, 
               
               
                 imageUrl, retailPrice” /&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;standard /&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;!-- 
               
               
                 ====================================================== 
               
               
                       CATEGORY MAPPING 
               
               
                 =================================================== --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;!-- Option 1, Jeops, with a separate rule base 
               
               
                 per store: --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;modifier-splitter field=“storeId”&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;jeops base=“Category” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;/modifier-splitter&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;required fields=“categoryIdsAsString” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;!-- Option 2, Drools, with a separate rule base 
               
               
                 per store: 
               
               
                     &lt;modifier-splitter prefix=“src/examples/config/” 
               
               
                 field=“storeId”&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;drools file=“category-mapping.drl” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;/modifier- splitter&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;required fields=“categoryIdsAsString” /&gt; 
               
               
                     --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;!-- Option 3, Old Style: 
               
               
                     &lt;category-mapping 
               
               
                 file=“src/examples/config/category-mapping.xml” /&gt; 
               
               
                     --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;!-- 
               
               
                 ====================================================== 
               
               
                 == 
               
               
                       SITE-BASED PRODUCT FILTERING 
               
               
                 ====================================================== 
               
               
                 == --&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;site-filters  file=“src/examples/config/site- 
               
               
                 filters.xml” /&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;/modifiers&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;!-- 
               
               
                     Sinks, for Indexing and related tasks 
               
               
                   --&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;sinks&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;splitter  name=“stores”  field=“storeId” 
               
               
                 optimize=“true”&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;index name=“products” /&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;field-serializer   name=“categories” 
               
               
                       field=“categoryIdsAsString” /&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;field-serializer    name=“prices” 
               
               
                 field=“priceAsString” /&gt; 
               
               
                       &lt;tag field=“storeName” /&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;/splitter&gt; 
               
               
                     &lt;store-list prefix=“stores/” name=“list.xml” /&gt; 
               
               
                   &lt;/sinks&gt; 
               
               
                 &lt;/loader-config&gt;
A system and method are provided for enhancing brand power and distribution channel relationships to satisfy online customers in electronic commercial transactions. In particular, the present system creates a deep collection of products of corporate importance from across the Internet and enables visitors at the organization's web site to find and purchase those items through existing retail and other distribution channels. Additionally, the highly customizable nature of the present invention enables the system to be delivered turnkey as a managed application, implemented without significant impact on the organization's technical operations or business processes. In one embodiment, users of a brand owner's web site can search from a collection of brand-related products available through distribution channel partners, online retailers and distributors. The users may then purchase a product by linking directly to the order entry system of affiliated distribution channel partners. In this manner, the brand owner doesn't alienate them, as well as causing brand dilution in the minds of consumers, or incurring lost sales through distributor-level competition and confusion.