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The Frequent Buyer Points File

The merchant directory of each merchant choosing the frequent buyer points scheme includes a file that contains the consumer’s frequent buyer points total. This is a cyclic record file consisting of ten 6-byte electronic purse transaction records. Each record contains a 6-byte number, and the current record contains the current frequent buyer points total. The result of each credit or debit to the cyclic file is written to the oldest record in the file, and thus the file contains a log of the last ten transactions and balances. If any difficulty is encountered during an update, the file is reverted to the previous valid balance value.

An update transaction can produce erroneous data if, for example, power is removed from the smart card or the card is reset while the new data is being written to the EEPROM of the card. By using a cyclic file, all that is lost is the latest transaction, not the entire point total. It is obviously easier for the merchant and the customer to reconstruct just the latest transaction than to reconstruct the entire purchasing history of the customer.

The Cumulative Purchases File

Besides the frequent buyer points scheme, Harvest Festival has included the cumulative purchases scheme in its loyalty program. The file supporting cumulative purchases is a fixed-length record file that contains a product descriptor followed by a numeric total. The size of the file, length of each record, coding of product descriptors, and units of the numeric total are all defined by Harvest Festival in the process of particularizing the scheme to their requirements. For Harvest Festival, the file consists of 20 18-byte records. Each record contains a 12-digit UPC as ASCII digits and a 6-byte integer that represents the total number of cents the customer has spent on that UPC. Each time the customer purchases a product whose UPC is in the cumulative purchases file, the amount of money spent on the product is added to the integer associated with the UPC. As a result, the consumer can keep track of the total amount of money she is spending on these particular products. She can use this information for budgeting purposes or to bargain for special volume purchase discounts from Harvest Festival.

Volume purchase discounts differ from bulk purchase discounts in that they are given against a promise to buy a specified volume of product over a time horizon rather than all at once. For example, I may be willing to agree to buy two cases of a particular brand of soda pop per week for the next year, but I certainly don’t want to take 104 cases home with me today. Volume purchase agreements are stock components of business-to-business commerce. The Smart Shopper card brings this mutually beneficial business arrangement to consumer and retail commerce.

The Want List File

Besides the frequent buyer points scheme, Scrivener’s Corner has chosen to include the want list scheme in its loyalty program. The file supporting the want list scheme is a fixed-length record file, each record containing a two-character type flag followed by a descriptive string, followed by a dash and finally a comma-separated list of modifiers. The tags and the vocabulary of the modifiers are defined by Scrivener’s Corner in the process of particularizing the general want list scheme. The want list file consists of ten records of 40 bytes each. Each record represents an item in the cardholder’s want list. The first two characters tell what kind of wanted item is being described by the record, and the last 38 bytes contain the description itself. Here’s an example:

AUJane Austen - First Edition, Very Good Condition
TIFor Whom the Bell Tolls - First Edition, Signed
SUGothic Romance - Paperback, Used

This is a Scrivener’s Corner want list for a customer looking for

  First editions of any work by the author Jane Austen
  Signed first editions of the work titled For Whom the Bell Tolls
  Paperbacks in the subject category of gothic romances

The item names such as AU, TI, and SU, together with the qualifier keywords such as First, Folio, and Paperback, have been defined by Scrivener’s Corner. Since the cardholder must use a Scrivener’s Corner Web page to define her want list and have it written onto her card, the application program behind this page can control the vocabulary used to define want list entries. This ensures each entry conforms to Scrivener’s rules and can be understood by the Scrivener’s inventory look-up program.


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