Pay-Per-Participation-&-Privilege-Patent
Good businesses listen to their customers. Better businesses charge their customers to influence their business. This patent application outlines a business method where the customer pays for the privilege to influence the offering of a business. In stark opposite of the focus group model (where the business pays participants for their input), this method describes how varying pricing levels can turn profit from individual or collective customer participation. There is a market of potential customers who would instantly pay for an opportunity to influence brands for which they hold great affinity. The amount the he is willing to pay or trade determines how much the customer's influence counts. This influence includes but is not limited to:
1.having opinions heard
2.developing a new technology
3.contributing to a repository
4.carrying out a design task
5.refining an algorithm
6.coming to a group decision
7.helping capture, organize, systematize or analyze amounts of data
Businesses Used to Pay Focus Groups for R & D:
Businesses Now Give Customers (Prosumers) the Option to Contribute for Free:
Business Will Soon Charge Customers (Prosumers) for the Opportunity to Contribute:
Patent Claims
1.This patent describes a business method (sales contract) that allows customers to pay for the right to influence company decisions on strategy, mission, projects, products or services. Users may express their influence, thoughts, contributions, proposals, opinions, endorsements, votes, research, analyzations, files, and/or participations with the the business, website, association, non-profit, or any other organized entity. This transaction involves the customer either sending monetary value, quantifiable goods, quantifiable participation, or quantifiable service value to any organized entity (or partner business) in exchange for the right to influence the overall-make-up, design, production, distribution, strategic direction, events, campaigns, initiatives or any other business decision of a company. This privilege can be, but is not limited to, a company privilege offering packaged alongside additional goods, services or media provided to the customer by the business.
2.Also under this patent, we are applying to patent the right for a business, website, association, non-profit, or any other organized entity to charge participants at various privilege levels in return for various influence levels of weighted potency & privilege. These various privilege levels are sold at different rates based on price or either the amount of value traded, the amount amount of participation traded, and/or the amount of goods traded. Here, a customer could pay for the amount of influence on a particular decision as well as the amount of total decisions to have an influence on. The more money or trade value supplied by the customer, the more influence and lasting value the customer has when proposing, endorsing, contributing, voting, organizing, etc... This includes the ability for past votes or contributions, cast from a particular customer, to influence the manner, process, price, and weighted potency for which future contribution opportunities are offered, thereby rewarding or penalizing based on past voting and contribution track record. A customer's participation in this business relationship can either remain exclusive towards a particular company privilege offering or a collective group of customers can all influence a particular company decision together. Contributions can either be tallied equally or the weighted system mentioned above can determine how much influence each customer has. In addition, partner companies can be involved in the same offering (or collectively supply a package of offerings) so that customers can influence multiple companies within one transaction, with revenue from these collective offering(s) shared accordingly.
3.Fees mentioned are either on a subscription basis or a pay per contribution basis. Prices can be fixed or set through an auctioning process. We are patenting the process of value-cash flow where the customer is paying the company instead of the current norm where the company pays the customer (or the customer works for free) for its collaborative input.
Potential Businesses Capitalizing on New Method (just a few examples)
(1) Professional Sports – fans pay for team season ticket packages in order to propose and vote on roster management decision
(2) Radio Stations/Newspaper/TV – Audience members pay various amounts to influence programming featured during different time blocks scheduled throughout the week or within the show itself
(3) Interactive choose our own adventure Movies – customer pays for ticket and finds a remote when he gets to his seat – alowing him to vote ( along with other audience members) on character decisions
(4) Public referendum in local, county, state, and federal government
(5) Campaign Fund-raising: assuring the sponsor that their choice in candidate actually stands up for the sponsor preferred stances on various issues
(6) Non-profit fund-raising: offering a menu of projects that can commence based on the discretion of participating sponsors
(7) WWF: subscribing fans voting on who their favorite wrestler should challenge next
(8) NASCAR: Point-pricing per vote on real-time pit decisions
(9) Customer Service: Customer pays to jump to the head of the line when calling in with problems in exchange for the right to answer focus group (alpha user) surveys – Monetizing the suggestion box
Possible Citations
System and method for influencing dynamic community shared elements of audio
Method and apparatus for prioritizing a telephone call according to a level
Electronic proposal preparation system for selling vehicles
Integrated decision management system
Subscriber call routing processing system
System and method for scheduling broadcast of and access to video programs
Some more jibber-jabber:
-Marketizing/Democrasizing the decision process based on money
-Auctioning off the decision making process
-Time counts as an assett being traded