PATENT FOR FREE TAXI SERVICE TO THE CONSUMERS
The Patent granted to Google relates to to arranging for free or discounted transportation to an advertiser's business location.A brief details of the patent are given below as extracted from the published patent [US 8630897 B1].
TITLE: Transportation-aware physical advertising conversions
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates generally to arranging for free or discounted transportation to an advertiser's business location. More specifically, the invention involves automatically comparing the cost of transportation and the potential profit from a completed transaction using a number of real-time calculations. For example, the calculation may consider various factors including a consumer's current location, the consumer's most likely route and form of transportation (such as train, personal car, taxi, rental car, or shared vehicle), the consumer's daily agenda, the price competing advertisers are willing to pay for the customer to be delivered to alternate locations, and other costs. In this regard, the customer's obstacles to entering a business location are reduced while routing and cost calculations are automatically handled based on the demand for the advertiser's goods and potential profit margins.
EXAMPLE GIVEN IN THE SPECIFICATION:
A. In one example, the method also includes receiving, from the client device, a request for the selected transportation option; and arranging the selected transportation option. In another example, the selected transportation option is an autonomous vehicle. In another example, the selected transportation option is a taxi service. In another example, the method further includes, identifying a second advertisement based on whether the user data associated with the second identified advertisement satisfies the at least one requirement associated with each of the target customer profiles; identifying one or more second transportation options for transporting the particular user from the current geographic location to the business location associated with the second identified advertisement; for each identified second transportation option, determining a cost value to transport the particular user from the current geographic location to the business location associated with the second identified advertisement; selecting a second transportation option based on the bid value associated with the identified second advertisement and the cost values; and conducting an auction to select the identified advertisement to be transmitted to the client device based on the bid value associated with the advertisement and the bid value associated with the second advertisement.
B. THEME PARK: For example, the business may specify a minimum number of passengers, a maximum number of passengers, or a range. A theme park may prefer to display advertisements to users indicating that they are accompanied by one or more children in order to increase revenue. A movie theater may offer a discount coupon for users in a carpool. In this case, the movie theater may also bundle the transportation arrangements with ticket purchases so that users are unlikely to lie about the number of passengers. In another example, a night club may prefer groups in order to have them stay longer or spend more money. In yet another example, a retail store may offer a personal discount code to each passenger of a group of passengers when the transportation is arranged. The retail store may track how many of the discount codes are used to determine how many of the passengers actually used the service and purchased goods and/or services.
Future of transportation system:
A similar kind of services are going to emerge all over the world in the service industry to get the more customers by arranging transportation for them. The future of the transportation depends upon the choice and likeness of the customer.
