Importance

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Abstract

Customer activity (especially activity on Internet web sites) is monitored in correspondence to a product or other entity, in order to enable a forecast of future “consumption” of the product or entity. (Consumption may be the sale, rental, use, viewing or interest in the product or other entity.) First, the monitoring method includes gathering activity information that characterizes the activity of the customers with reference to the entity. Then, the gathered activity information is mapped to a psychographic profile that represents a level of interest of the customers as a function of corresponding phases of a consumption cycle. Finally, the mapped activity information as well as control information (which may include product metadata, customer data, product contextual data) are processed to formulate the forecast of future consumption of the entity. The “product” being monitored may be a physical product, an electronic product such as a computer game or downloadable file, an abstract concept, or a group or category of any of these products. Because the customer activity can be measured and analyzed in near real time, product consumption forecasts are quickly delivered; and use of the control information increases the effective intelligence of the mapping and processing processes, rendering more accurate product consumption forecasts.

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First Claim