Abstract
News editors obtained the following quote from the background information suppli ed by the inventors:“Online systems, such as online concierge systems, support “directed spend” programs that allow a thirdparty sponsor to give a stipend to customers to purchase certain items that fall within a definition of thedirecte d spend program. It is often not practically or technically possible to manually label items foreligibility for a directed spend program, since customers shop at different stores, there are too many itemsto label, and the items change ove r time. To avoid individually labeling items, online concierge systemstypically use item category information to determine eligibility for a directed spend pro gram, where a thirdparty sponsor of the directed spend program defines one or m ore rules for the directed spend programbased on a hierarchical product taxonom y. However, the accuracy and specificity of labeling items in adatabase can var y, leading to errors in categorization of items, making such rules less reliable for definingeligibility for a directed spend program. For example, the “dairy” category may include non-dairy itemssuch as (non-dairy) ice cream, and the onl ine concierge systems may not be able to differentiate betweendifferent types o f ice cream.”
NETL
NSTL