WO2001042873A2

WO2001042873A2 - Method and system for electronic distribution and collection of survey information

Info

Publication number: WO2001042873A2
Application number: PCT/US2000/033388
Authority: WO
Inventors: Chun-Wei Chen
Original assignee: Touchpak, Inc
Priority date: 1999-12-10
Filing date: 2000-12-07
Publication date: 2001-06-14
Also published as: AU2077701A; WO2001042873A3

Abstract

A method and apparatus to distribute electronic surveys (3000) to various queuing locations (3400) such as retail establishments with waiting patrons, present the information in the survey (3000), and collect information from respondents (3550) that meet the qualification criteria established by the marketer (3500). The invention allows for imposition of qualifications not only on the respondent (3500), but on the type of queuing location (3000), and even the time, place, and manner of survey presentation conditions (3026). The invention allows incentives to be offered for completing the survey (3000). The invention presents adjusted surveys (3000) based on respondent profile, cross connections to a Point of Sale system (3480), and short-circuiting the qualification process based on available or implied information about respondent (3550). Preferred mode uses mobile survey devices (3450) remote from queuing location (3400).

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION AND COLLECTION OF SURVEY INFORMATION

BACKGROUND ART

The invention relates to the electronic distribution of information in the field of direct marketing typified by surveys, advertisements and other promotions in retail establishments. The invention also provides a means for recording data regarding an individual person across interactions that specific person has with the Digital Survey System. The invention also allows for: protection of an individual's privacy and anonymity; selective presentation of choices of surveys, advertisements and other information; customization of the surveys, advertisements and other information. These can be accomplished based on the individual demographic, locale demographic, and other relevant information about the target audience and environment.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

Advertising in previous years has become a rapidly growing, well-developed field. Whether implicit or not, all advertisers have centered on capturing the attention of the consumer.

However, an advertisement that interrupts a form of entertainment tends to be regarded as an unwanted obstruction to one's enjoyment of a television show or a song on the radio. To overcome consumer reticence and capture their open attention, advertisers are by no means lacking in schemes. They readily rely upon entertainment principles based on demographics of particular target groups to win the consumer's interest. Many advertisers have imbedded their advertisement in the entertainment content itself, so as to make the advertisement part of the entertainment rather than an interruption of the entertainment. Moreover, in more recent years many advertisers have effectively won the interest of the consumers by giving the consumers a greater incentive to read their ads; that is, offering direct compensation to the consumer to read their ads. For example, Cybergold, an internet marketer, grants credit to consumers to read ads demographically suited to the consumer's needs and interests.

The present invention relies primarily on two principles to attract the attention of the consumer: (a) waiting for a service is often boring to consumers and (b) the consumers are more likely to fill out a survey during this otherwise unused time than the consumer would be when confronted with a survey at home or while walking in a shopping mall. Hence, the present invention targets consumers that must wait for a service; such as those found in the restaurants. Under this scenario, restaurants will be able to provide a portable computer to their waiting consumers that contains various entertaining programs geared towards one or more age groups. Therefore, both the consumer and the restaurant are able to benefit from this service. The consumer is able to wait without becoming bored or irritated or worse yet leaving when the wait seems too long. The restaurant is able to benefit from an increase of sales as the consumers patronizing that particular restaurant will find the services more enjoyable. Moreover, the advertisers are also able to benefit from this process. For inextricably embedded in this entertainment service are advertisements demographically geared towards the restaurant's clientele. As an incentive to read the ads or fill out short surveys, the advertisers will offer incentives such as coupons to the consumer that will reduce their bill or perhaps give them a free drink or appetizer. Through the present invention, the survey information can be transferred electronically to the marketer, and the restaurant can be compensated for the rebate (for example, a free appetizer).

The primary tool of effective marketing is current and accurate information. The ability to know more about the consumers and their demographics is what allows the marketers to tailor their message for their audience. The more they know about their audience, the more persuasive they become. To gain this information, the marketers use promotions and incentives to persuade consumers to cooperate. They offer rebates, coupons, gifts, prizes and even cash.

For the purposes of this document and the claims that follow, the present invention will be referred to as the Digital Survey System.

For the purposes of this document and the claims that follow, a "survey" will be taken to mean any survey, advertisement or promotion, including but not limited to (a) information requested from consumers such as customer response cards, market research surveys, polls and academic research studies, and (b) information supplied to consumers such as promotional offers of services or goods, advertisements and informational/promotional articles.

A "marketer" will be taken to mean any entity requesting responses from the public including but not limited to pollsters, academics doing research companies performing, traditional market research surveys, advertisers or marketers. For the purposes of this document and the claims that follow, the delegation of certain marketing acts of a company to an advertising agency can be ignored and all of the acts relating to a survey from the decisions within a company to the actions of the marketing professionals (both in-house and external) can be lumped together.

For the purposes of this document and in the claims that follow, a "credit" will be taken to mean any type or form of compensation offered to a survey respondent in exchange for using the system. A credit includes but is not limited to immediate discounts or rebates on purchases at the locale, the selection of a service such as a jukebox song, the provision of a promotional item such as a complimentary pair of sunglasses, and immediate discounts on purchases of items made electronically such as the purchase of a book through the Digital Survey System.

Surveying consists of three fundamental activities: getting the surveys to the right people, getting the people to fill them out, and gathering all of the survey information to be analyzed. The innovations presented by the invention address these three areas. A) Targeting Survey Respondents Based on Various Demographics.

Misleading information is worse than no information at all. Marketers want to have information about certain types of people so that they can target those types of people more effectively. The present invention allows the marketer to target specific audiences based on the combination of one or more of the following: survey respondent demographics, locale demographics and Time, Place, and Manner demographics.

B) Survey Respondent Demographics

Survey respondent demographics refer to information known about a specific survey respondent. With traditional survey methods, this is often little or no information. These qualifications include any parameter that could be used to separate a group of people into two or more groups. Examples start with gender, age, marital status, income level, home ownership status, hobbies, education level, favorite magazines, favorite television shows, amount that is spent annually on buying computer equipment, average monthly phone bill, whether the person currently has a particular medical condition, or whether the person intends to purchase a certain type of item in the next three months; and whether one has viewed a particular movie.

Possible qualifications ^• might include attributes of one's children, attributes of one's spouse, attributes of one's parents (for example - the medical condition of one's elderly parent), attributes of one's job responsibilities - do you have authority to select computer printers for use in your work area; attributes of one's pet - does your dog have fleas? The reasons for using the various qualification criteria vary between marketers. Examples include:

Some marketers may want to find a survey applicant that has the general characteristics of one particular demographic segment and then attempt to gather information about how to most effectively reach that segment; Some marketers may seek to find people that have recently purchased a specific item and then find out how the person feels about the quality, price, and support that came from the product;

Some marketers may be trying to see if executives that are subscribers to particular magazine have noticed an advertising campaign that has been running.

Some marketers may be political pollsters who are looking for information from groups that are difficult to survey using telephone surveys;

Some marketers may be academics or researchers who are seeking answers about drug use or sexual practices in young adults and who feel that this format is more likely to provide truthful answers than a face-to-face interview;

Some marketers may be seeking to record reactions to people who are waiting out a lengthy delay at an airport in order to gage the impact of the delay on travelers and on their patience with additional stressors. To these marketers, the qualification may be that the person flies more than 50,000 miles a year and has been traveling today for more than 5 hours.

The marketers might deem several different litmus tests as suitable to satisfy a particular condition. Thus a marketer for minivans might seek someone with several children, or someone with two dogs, or someone who regularly shops for antique furniture as candidates for a minivan.

C) Locale Demographics

Locale demographics refer to information known about the consumers based on the type of locale (sports bar, comedy show, family restaurant), the area of town, nearby attractions. These demographics might include information about the town or area of town such as residences, average level of education, average income of residents, average income of commuters into the location which can be represented and collected from such sources as the visitor's bureau, local and state chambers of commerce. An example of using a locale demographics qualification is to limit the distribution of a snow tire survey to locales that average more than two feet of snowfall per winter. This use of a locale demographic differs from a Time, Place, and Manner demographic in that the snowfall limitation is one of many limitations that apply to a place on a map - a location. It does not specify whether the survey is given at a bus station, a hair styling saloon, at a bowling alley, or at a jazz club after midnight. The locale demographics do not check the local temperature or the amount of precipitation that fell in the last three days. The fine tuning required for such questions would come from a Time Place and Manner set of qualifications.

D) Time, Place, and Manner Demographics

Time, Place, and Manner demographics refer to information inferred about consumers based on conditions such as time of day, days with baseball games, festival days or other special events. Time, Place, and Manner restrictions can be useful in several ways. Time, Place, and Manner demographics can provide an inference about the likes and dislikes of the people presented with the survey so as to reduce the need to ask qualifying questions. Time, Place, and Manner can also be used as a rough filter to reduce the likelihood that surveys on controversial or "adult" topics will be presented to someone who will be offended. The risk may not be reduced to zero, but the survey system may want to reduce offended respondents since many respondents are also customers of the queuing locations that are retail establishments. For example, a survey that was limited to retail establishments that have a bar is less likely to be presented to someone who has a religious objection against alcohol. A survey about the effectiveness of various advertisements on the importance of using condoms might be allowed within a particular queuing location. An option to reduce the likelihood that a child would see the ads on a survey device being used by an appropriate respondent is to limit the survey to after 11 p.m. The limitation could be placed by the marketer or by the queuing location. If placed by the queuing location then it would be a second Time, Place, and Manner qualification file for that survey, one for the queuing location and one for the marketer. As a practical matter both the Time, Place, and Manner qualification sets would both have to be satisfied so that the marketer's Time, Place, and Manner qualifications are not bypassed. To the extent that the queuing location Time, Place, and Manner qualifications cannot be met while at the same time meeting the marketer's Time, Place, and Manner qualifications, then the survey becomes unavailable. The queuing location would not have an incentive to remove surveys it had decided to allow from availability. When the response rate for the survey burdened with mutually exclusive Time, Place, and Manner qualification files stays at zero, then someone should notice and remedy the situation. This particular conflict at one queuing location is not a particular problem for the marketer since other queuing locations will be providing responses.

Another advantage of Time, Place, and Manner qualifications to limit the survey distribution is to find respondents with an active interest in a topic rather than a passing or mild interest. A survey on music preferences may find many qualified respondents at a music store. A marketer wanting information about preferences for tanning products among people engaged in water sports may want to limit the survey to people who respond at a facility with an outdoor pool and then may want to further limit the response to a survey given in December to those states with warm weather at that time of year.

E Use Time. Place, and Manner Information to Assist Qualification of Respondent

Process of qualification may be assisted, reinforced, or streamlined by using qualifications about the valid time place and manner of providing the survey. Since there is no point in asking everyone if they are waiting for a plane since the only people likely to be waiting for a plane are people at an airport, the requirement that a particular survey be given only at an airport and at various facilities within an airport will streamline that process.

Depending on the amount of confidence the sponsoring marketer wants in the answer, the Time, Place, and Manner qualification can be used in addition to rather in place of a respondent qualification question on interest in a given topic. Returning to the airport delay survey, limiting the distribution to an airport and then asking if the respondent is waiting for a plane provides an additional filter against responses from people at a shopping mall or a restaurant who answer a question incorrectly as a joke or respond with any answer that they believe will lead to them obtaining the specific survey premium.

As another example, a marketer wanting a survey set from those people likely to spend money on jazz recordings may chose to use a Time, Place, and Manner restriction that limits offering the music survey to night clubs shortly before and during a jazz performance. Note that the Time,

Place, and Manner qualifications may require a two-step screening. The first step limits distribution of the surveys to queuing locations with the potential to meet the Time, Place, and Manner criteria in addition to the locale criteria. For example, the nightclub might have a location profile that indicates that it has performances on a regular basis from several categories of entertainment on the profile qualification questionnaire. One of the indicated entertainment types would have been jazz in this example. The Time, Place, and Manner profile is updated more frequently, from daily to several times a day. When the Time, Place, and Manner profile was updated to show a Jazz performance starting at 10:00 p.m. the intelligence sent with the survey would be able to close a qualification switch after 9 p n. for the Time, Place, and Manner qualification that the survey be given during a Jazz performance or within an hour of the start time of a Jazz performance.

Time, Place, and Manner qualifications could be any measurable feature that is useful for the marketer to target the audience and environment that the marketer seeks. Because the marketer wants responses and wants to rely on the accuracy of the Time, Place, and Manner status files of various queuing locations, the marketer is discouraged from seeking bizarre or difficult to monitor parameters unless these are particularly important to the survey. Thus a Time, Place, and Manner parameter that the bulk of the current set of patrons be dressed casually, would be hard to judge and would be difficult to keep current in the Time, Place, and Manner file. It is unlikely that a queuing location would run over and update that Time, Place, and Manner file when a group of lawyers walks into the queuing location with dark suits on. Likewise the queuing location does have an incentive to enable as many surveys as possible so that its patrons are provided with surveys that match their interests. In many instances the queuing location benefits financially from completed surveys in that the survey system can provide a credit that the survey respondent/queuing location patron may use on that visit to pay for goods or services. This infusion of payments to benefit the patron, plus any additional handling fee, results in another source of revenue for the queuing location.

Thus a night club is likely to provide the queuing location locale profile information and then update the type of performance for a given night into a Time, Place, and Manner status file. The update can be done before the queuing location becomes busy. This one update might result in several dozen patrons answering jazz surveys. Failure to update may mean that the jazz audience is asked about wedding dress preferences since the night club hosted a wedding fashion show the night before.

Some pieces of information could logically be characterized as either locale demographic or Time, Place, and Manner demographic information. For example, does one fill out a separate locale demographic profile for the frequent travelers that wait in the member only airline lounges from the general locale of the airport? Or does one pick up that information as part of the Time Place and Manner profile for one part of the airport. It really does not matter whether they are ultimately characterized as locale or Time, Place, and Manner. In fact with object-oriented programming, the information may not be stored in separate "files" in the traditional sense of the word file. Although the queue of people waiting for a taxi at the airport will have some of the same people that could be found at some time in the frequent flyer lounges, the overall population demographics of the two groups will differ — it is important the information useful for efficiently targeting demographic pools be made available to the Digital Survey System, not what the information happens to be called in the abstract.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS The following figures illustrate the function and form of the invention. The first seven figures describe the invention as an object-oriented design. The Figures 8 through 12 describe the invention as a structured design. The drawings are summarized as:

FIG. 1 is an analogy that is useful for envisioning one layer of qualification conditions;.

FIG.2 is a flowchart for the various activities related to a particular survey, including: the creation, distribution, completion of the survey, and the post completion activities to provide the promised incentives to the participants and the collection of surveys to the requesting Marketer.

FIG. 3 is a series of diagrams showing the interaction of elements to accomplish various steps in Fig. 2;

FIG. 4 shows the overall interaction of the various software components that encompass the invention;

FIG. 5 shows an example of the hardware components that may be used to implement the invention;

FIG. 6 shows an example of the administration of a survey;

FIG. 7 shows an example of palm manager synchronization; FIG. 8 shows an example of credit authorization;

FIG. 9 shows an example of collector synchronization;

FIG. 10 shows an example of survey delivery;

FIG. 11 shows an example of survey distribution;

FIG. 12 shows an example of survey collection; FIG. 13 shows an example of survey selection;

FIG. 14 shows an example of survey acquisition; and

FIG. 15 shows an example of survey respondent lookup. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS A) Short Circuiting the Qualification Process

FIG. 1 is an analogy that is useful for envisioning one layer of qualification conditions. As an analogy, Figure 1 does not represent any particular circuit that must be present in an embodiment of the present invention. Turning now to Figure 1, the set of qualifications for a target audience for a particular survey can be represented by a set of switches 110 in circuit 100. This particular set of qualification conditions is more complicated than most in that there are eight different ways that a person could qualify as indicated by the possible paths between side 102 and side 104 of circuit 100. Each switch represents a binary condition for each of the various qualifying questions (income over 50k, gender is female, gender is male, has a child under the age of 3, operates an in- home day care facility, respondent works outside the home, respondent shops at warehouse stores, and so forth). If a particular combination of desired answers effectively closes all the switches along one or more paths, then the respondent is qualified to answer this detailed survey designed to help the marketers convince working moms to drive to a warehouse store to stock up on certain disposable diapers.

Note that the goal for a marketer is usually going to be to obtain timely information to use in some analysis conducted by the marketer or to document a trend in opinion in a certain group over time. In either case, the marketer wants to obtain information quickly while limiting the results to qualified respondents taking the survey under suitable conditions. For example, the marketer may want a quick sample of 100 qualified people to see if a proposed marketing strategy is likely to work so the marketer can obtain funding for a larger more detailed study. If taken to extreme, a large number of qualifying questions would cause a potentially qualifying respondent to stop filling out the survey before finishing both the qualifying question and the survey questions. Thus to the extent possible, the survey should quickly assess if the respondent is qualified. Thus the question of whether the respondent shops at warehouse stores is unnecessary when the survey is taken at a warehouse store. This particular qualifying switch can be set to "closed" just based on the location where the question is being asked. More specifically, the survey reads information stored about the retail location and answers what questions can be answered from that information.

If information previously accumulated from the respondent is available, other qualifying information can be filled in without taking time to ask the respondent. For example, a user profile filled out by the respondent could be used to get the gender, age, and income information. Information stored from respondent responses to other surveys (either qualification questions or survey questions can be accessed to fill in additional question switches.

In addition to a profile created for use in the answering of surveys, the warehouse store may have its own information about the respondent in its Point of Sale ("POS") computer system. The information may include questions such as the gender, and the occupation of the respondent (for example-patent attorney). For example the answers to a membership card application for the warehouse store may already reveal that the respondent is a patent attorney. This information about the respondent's occupation may be used to infer that the respondent is not a provider of in- home day care. Acting upon this information, the logic accompanying the survey would set the answer to "no" without asking the respondent whether the respondent is a provider of in-home day care. Since it is only unlikely and not impossible for someone to be an in-home day care provider during the day and a patent attorney at night, making this inference raises the risk that a qualified respondent that owns a day care center is being prematurely disqualified because the respondent works as a patent attorney at night. The marketer may feel the tradeoff of making the qualification process go faster merits some small risk of missing a qualified respondent.

The respondent is left to answer several qualification questions that are closely connected to this particular survey such as whether she lives within a half hour drive to a warehouse store. Since these questions asked do not require repetition of information provided before, the respondent is not annoyed by having to answer the several remaining qualification questions.

When the marketer desires to only target a certain survey respondent demographic, the present invention will only offer a survey respondent the opportunity to participate in the survey after verifying that the consumer matches the survey respondent demographic. Whether the survey respondent matches the target audience may be ascertained from information the survey respondent volunteers.

The marketer may also target a certain class of locales. This can be accomplished by maintaining a database of locale profiles and only distributing the surveys to locales that match the target. The type and class of business, the geographic location, or the typical clientele can specify the type of locale.

Under the Time, Place, and Manner demographics, the marketer may also target a specific time period. Most of us are aware of a restaurant, movie theater, or other location that has a different distribution of people at one time of day from another time of day. The movie matinee crowd is a different crowd from the midnight movie crowd. The dining crowd during the time period for the "early bird dinner special" is often a different crowd from those who come to dine at prime time and pay full price. The look and feel of an airport is different on a Saturday morning than it is on a Friday afternoon. Whether this is a specific time of day, week, month or year, the invention can ensure that only the target audience interacts with the survey.

B) Cross sectional surveys The Digital Survey System has the additional capability to create an explicit distribution survey across a cross-section of survey respondent demographics, locale demographics and Time, Place, and Manner demographics. In the prior art, surveys could be sent to a number of homes and then the responses may be categorized later. However, it is difficult to accurately predict how many mailed surveys will arrive at each the homes of each demographic group without spending a good deal of time picking the survey audience beforehand. Even if a balanced survey distribution is sent out, it is highly unlikely that the survey response will be either 100% or if less than 100% that the survey response rate will be the same for all demographic groups. Some groups tend to be less trusting of anyone asking a great number of questions. Some groups do not believe that any response to a survey sent to their home address could ever be anonymous. Some groups tend to have less time to answer surveys. The Digital Survey System will allow the marketer to specify a survey that is to be distributed to a variety of profiles with preference given to certain demographics. For instance, a pollster may wish to poll differences in political views between races and economic classes. However, certain demographics may be more desirable for the survey because they often are under represented in traditional polling methods or they are simply difficult to locate. For example, people that have been homeless in the last 10 years, parents of pregnant teenagers, great grandchildren of European immigrants, spouses of avid golf players, people interested in traveling to Greece, bachelors who cook more than four times a week. Therefore, a larger credit may be used as an incentive for people who fit that desirable demographic, or the number of surveys for other demographics may be limited. (A more detailed description of the process of awarding incentive credits is provided below). This information can be encoded into the survey on the survey device and controlled from the information servers. When the Digital Survey System has received the requested number of surveys for the less desired (less rare) demographics it can continue to seek survey response but only from the types of respondents needed to complete the desired distribution.

C) The Process

The preferred implementation of the present invention is to use a top level computer at one or more locations to handle the distribution and processing of surveys.

The top level computer will need the capacity to send, receive, and in some cases handle a variety of data formats. The data formats that are most likely to arise include the formats for audio, images, video, and various computer processing languages including those that operate in an internet browser environment such as JAVA, C++, Visual Basic and others.

D) It Starts With a Survey

The top level computer needs to be able to receive surveys that are in a form suitable for transmission in a digital means. Transmission in a digital means would cover the preferred mode of transmission across the Internet. The transmission could be along other channels such as a digital telephone connection if there is sufficient bandwidth to transmit the necessary information. The computer could re-use surveys that were used at one time and then stored for subsequent use. It is likely that a mechanism would be used to modify previously used surveys to update the survey questions. These modified surveys would then be made available to the queuing locations. Although less convenient, the surveys could be provided on a machine-readable media such as a computer disc, or a Compact Disc. As an additional service, the surveys could be converted from another format, including a paper survey. The survey after conversion would be made available for use in the top level computer.

E) Qualifications

As discussed throughout this specification, the surveys will have the parameters that the marketer wishes to use as a set of qualifications such as the set represented in Figure 1. The qualifications cover, respondent qualifications, locale qualifications, and Time, Place, and Manner qualifications. Other layers of qualifications may be added on such as Time, Place, and Manner qualifications required by the queuing location. These qualifications provide levels prerequisites for selecting a given end-user as an appropriate participant in a survey. As discussed above, marketers may be most interested in finding people within certain hard-to- find categories but also interested in getting responses from one or more easier to find categories to use as a control group. These marketers might offer the same survey to both the hard-to-find and the easier find categories of respondent. However, the marketer may offer a more valuable incentive or "premium" to the hard to find category of respondent. Since there are two different premium levels with different qualifications, these are now effectively two different surveys.

Some of the benefits of the Digital Survey System arise from the use of surveys that use logic associated with the survey or survey system to tailor the survey to the known information about the respondent to reduce the number of redundant or silly questions (asking males if they are pregnant) and to otherwise expedite the survey or to resolve apparent conflicts between two pieces of information provided by the respondent.

The survey anticipated for use in the present invention is one that has onboard intelligence although other static surveys can be used by the present invention. Thus for the intelligent surveys (sometimes called dynamic surveys), the set of questions presented to the end-user is not the same for all end-users. Some surveys may use some questions that sample the qualification data and then discontinue this line of questioning if the sampled questions match the qualification criteria. The survey may terminate with a polite explanation that the person was provided the survey in error and ask some questions to see what was the source of the error. The survey may take information stored in a user profile or a session profile and use that information to answer one or more questions without asking the end-user. The survey may take session information or user information and then ask the user for confirmation or permission to use that information as the response to this survey. The preferred embodiment of the present invention would use information provided at the qualification stage to alter or tailor the questions presented to the survey respondent. The alteration could include adding or deleting questions from the core set of survey questions. For example, if a survey respondent qualifies to take the minivan survey based on having several children, the survey may ask additional questions such as the number of children in car seats, the approximate height of the children (if this is relevant to legroom questions). The same survey would not ask these same questions about children to another respondent that is without children but has a hobby of buying antique furniture at auctions. This antique collector might be asked questions on specific topics such as the use of tie-downs to secure loads or the use of a trailer hitch.

The survey may simply instantiate the names of the respondent and the people or things that are significant to the respondent if the names have been given. So the questions about pet food might insert the name of a respondent's pet dog be it "Bella", "Batdog", or "Fleabag".

To target survey respondent demographics, the present invention must gather information about the survey respondent. One source of information may come through the survey respondent filling out a survey directly. Any information that the survey respondent volunteers may be used to attempt to match the respondent to a target group for a survey's survey respondent demographics. Information may also be gathered indirectly by observing the survey respondent's use of the survey device. If the survey device has both informational and recreational content, interaction with the content may indicate a survey respondent's interest in a specific topic. This indirect information can then be used to target the survey respondent with relevant surveys. As mentioned above, relevant information can also be gathered by interfacing with the Point-of-Sale computer system of the locale. Point-of-Sale computer systems typically have a large amount of information about the survey respondent and this information can be used to specify or augment the demographic information stored for a particular survey respondent.

F) Tracking the Survey Respondent

To make the use of information collected about a respondent particularly effective, it is desirable to be able to track the survey respondent across interactions with the Digital Survey System as much as possible. Ideally the tracking would occur across both time and different location. The ability to capture information from respondent activity at a variety of locations that do not otherwise share information with one another (such as restaurants in competition with one another, or a national park and a tire repair waiting room). One way of collecting information and associating it with a particular respondent is to use a respondent id. The respondent id may take the form of a number, a membership card or a token that the survey respondent would maintain and provide. Tracking the survey respondent can also be accomplished if the survey respondent is willing to supply a piece of identifying information like a name, phone number, or address. An additional method of tracking survey respondents is to interface with existing systems like a Point-of-Sale computer system which tracks a customer's purchases. The Digital Survey System will be subject to imperfect information at times, and therefore to track survey respondents the Digital Survey System may also need to correlate survey information to build a more complete survey respondent profile. Access to imperfect information means that sometimes the information provided may contain mistakes or may be incomplete. Therefore the attempt to recognize different interactions with the Digital Survey System as originated by the same survey respondent requires heuristic methods.

The survey respondent benefits from having to enter information time and time again from one survey to the next if the survey respondent has a user profile and the electronic survey uses the information in the user profile. The time saving aspects of a user profile are particularly large for long text strings such as name, address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address.

Another way of tracking a user across interactions with the Digital Survey System is to use a biometric instrument to measure a repeatable parameter. The range of parameters that can be measured in a repeatable way include finger or hand prints, retinal scans, voice prints, the acceleration and pressure of a stylus while signing the respondent's signature, and other biometrics. The biometric instrument may be cumbersome or expensive to place on each survey device. A solution is to provide a docking bay to allow the survey device to enter into electronic communication with a biometric instrument during the initiation of a survey session to allow identification of the respondent and downloading of the respondent profile.

G) Protecting the Survey Respondent's Privacy

The privacy of this information is protected by the Digital Survey System. The information gathered is only made available to the marketer that the survey respondent expressly responds to and then only as an anonymous response. A survey respondent's personal information is only provided to a marketer with the express consent of the survey respondent. This is done to protect the anonymity and privacy of the survey respondents. However, the survey respondent will be encouraged to volunteer an identifying datum such as a phone number, a respondent identification code, or a biometric measurement on every interaction with the Digital Survey System. This would allow the Digital Survey System to personalize itself to the survey respondent's preferences.

H) Providing the Credits

A recurring challenge in surveying is getting consumers to provide information about themselves. For this reason, marketers commonly resort to credits to convince consumers to provide information about themselves. Examples of this are business card raffles, kids clubs and rebate cards. Many local businesses offer prizes like free meals on a regular basis. To enter the raffle the customer drops a business card in an entry box. At the end of the week or month a business card is selected from the entry box to award the prize. The objective of collecting business cards is to limit the contest to the section of the population that carries business cards (employed individuals in ownership or white collar positions.) The business gains a lot of information about their clientele, such as where they work and what kind of position they hold in their respective enterprises.

Many national fast-food restaurant chains sponsor kids clubs where they offer the participants magazines with games and puzzles and complementary birthday coupons. The chain is then able to identify and target a significant segment of their clientele, the children whom the parents seek to entertain. Many manufacturers offer significant rebate coupons with their products in the hope of gaining insight into their customer base. By providing the incentive via rebate, the manufacturer learns the name and address of the purchaser and possibly other information by requiring the sales receipt (which would provide the name of the store and the sale price.) For some small commodity items such as "Zip" disks, the rebate has been up to the value of the product itself. Therefore, a consumer gets a personal "Zip" disk for free if the consumer takes the time to reveal information to the manufacturer by filling out the rebate coupon.

Unfortunately, many consumers are not adequately motivated by the promise of a rebate check several weeks in the future. Many consumers know that many rebate coupons made it home but did not get the processing, stamp and envelope needed to complete the process. In this age of direct deposit and ATM machines, many consumers are likely to find a check for a few dollars to be a nuisance since the check will need a special trip to the bank for deposit.

The present invention provides a new and innovative way for marketers to convince consumers to provide information about themselves. The present invention provides a means of immediately fulfilling a credit in a retail establishment in return for the survey respondent providing one or more responses. The terms "immediate", "immediately" or other variants are used in this document and the claims that follow to mean soon enough to allow use of the credit during that retail visit. Thus, "immediately" could be within seconds or minutes for certain retail transactions such as a survey given during a gasoline fill up or a period of an hour or more for surveys taken on planes, or trains, at intermission of a show or between the wait for a table and dessert at a fine restaurant. This allows the marketer to provide the survey respondent with gratification tailored to the survey respondent's interests.

For instance, if a survey respondent is visiting a restaurant on Friday night the survey respondent is interested is in enjoying a good dinner. For example, the present invention allows the survey respondent to fill out a survey while waiting to be seated. Use of the present invention allows the survey respondent to be gratified by receiving a free appetizer or a rebate against the survey respondent's meal expense. This provides the marketer with a new means to provide credits to survey respondents. Prior art includes purchase incentives such as coupons or game tokens affixed to soft drink cups, bottle caps, and groceries. The present invention does not rely on purchasing an object and taking a physical piece of the purchased object as a token of any sort. The present invention does not require spending money as a means to get a coupon or game piece. Unlike these prior art devices, the present invention provides an incentive for filling out a survey and submitting the set of responses.

Providing the credit to the survey respondent can be done a number of ways such as: applying a rebate to a consumer's purchases; supplying them with a promotional item in the store; or giving them access to special products and promotional items that can be ordered via the Digital Survey System. The diversity of credits that a survey respondent can receive varies from locale to locale. To address this, the Digital Survey System encodes the types of credits to be applied at each locale in the surveys before they are sent to the survey devices at the various locales. This can be done using the locale database which contains information regarding the locale demographic and the types of credits the locale supports. In order to provide the credit, the Digital Survey System must be able to correlate the credit with the survey respondent without compromising the survey respondent's privacy and anonymity. This can be resolved by any conventional means including: giving the survey respondent an authorization code to present to store personnel; interfacing with the Point-of-Sale computer system in a locale; or giving them a physical token including a paper token to be redeemed. In the case where the credit is used in conjunction with the purchase of products, the correlation can be carried out using the shipping address, credit card or other personal information provided by the survey respondent.

I) Acquisition of Survey Information

The third fundamental issue is the actual means of acquisition of survey information. The overhead involved in performing a survey can be quite significant. The prior art method of requiring a respondent to fill out a paper survey there were tremendous drawbacks. The drawbacks included the illegibility of some information, the mistakes caused by transcription of the information, and the raw cost of entering the information into computerized databases for analysis. Collectively these drawbacks present a staggering amount of overhead to the marketer. Over the years many innovations have eased the burden associated with surveying. The appearance of computer scannable survey sheets allowed the marketer to automate some of the process by limiting the survey to multiple choice questions, but certain information still had to be manually entered. The advent of computerized survey stations allowed automated entry of the non-multiple choice information by the survey respondent himself. The introduction of survey forms on the World Wide Web allow marketers to completely automate the collection of information for many business processes such as product information and support queries. The present invention provides a new and innovative way to acquire and organize survey information. Digital Survey System creates a network of survey devices that are responsible for the presentation and collection of surveys. The actual topology of the equipment is not particularly important as long as the features exist within the system and communication links do not impede the process of matching survey respondents to surveys and then immediately making a credit available to the survey respondent. The survey devices may be physically networked to the central computer, wirelessly networked to the central computer or periodically synchronized with the central computer over a network. At present this may require a separate computer in the retail location to perform the collection of surveys and authorization of credits. If the survey devices do not have the capability to interface directly with the information servers, an intermediary computer may be required to make the communication possible. In such a case, it is reasonable to delegate certain responsibilities to this intermediary computer.

J) Verification of Information

When collecting information it is important to prevent the inaccurate or false information from being collected. This can be of particular concern when the survey respondent providing the information is being compensated for the information. For instance, some individuals frequently respond with false information when attempting to download trial software from websites. At other times people will respond with false information in order to get candy, a mug or some other gift while filling out some application or form. The preferred embodiment of the Digital Survey System verifies the information provided at two points. At the point-of-survey acquisition, the survey device uses does several preliminary tests to verify that information is legitimate. This includes ruling out invalid phone numbers, zip codes, addresses. When possible the survey device will take advantage of the substantial databases maintained by the Digital Survey System to cross check the accuracy of the information. This will also allow the Digital Survey System to do sophisticated checks such as preventing a consumer from filling out a survey multiple times at different locations. When done at the point of survey acquisition, the verification can prevent fraudulent use of the Digital Survey System. The second point of verification is after the responses have been collected by the information servers. At this point meticulous tests can be run against the data. This may include the verification of all phone numbers, addresses and electronic mail addresses against national databases. In this way the Digital Survey System can provide the highest quality data to the marketers as an integrated service.

K) Controlling the Presentation Environment.

A marketer may have a specific need for the environment that the survey is presented. The needs may include parameters that the marketer believes are favorable to reliable results (ambient noise below a certain limit, and ambient light within a certain range, time between responses indicating reflection but not extended periods of distraction). Another marketer may want comments on previews for a movie or a video game and want a survey device to be used that has suitable output devices to provide the samples of the video to look good and stir interest in the video through use of the survey. While the prior art use of a human survey agent would provide some control over these parameters the present invention allows the marketer to select and achieve compliance of a number of criteria without having a human agent to monitor the situation.

If the marketer only wants to show demo clips of a new computer game on survey devices with the capacity to output audio, images, or video of a minimum quality level, then the control of distribution may use multiple levels of control. As the present invention does not depend on using the same survey device at all queuing locations, it follows that some survey devices are going to be better suited for certain types of surveys. Examples include the use of waterproof devices with antiglare screens for use near pools; back-lit screens for use in certain lighting; and survey devices with headsets for music video surveys. A more sophisticated example is the use of survey devices with the capacity to gage position inside the queuing location from local position indicators or from GPS could be appropriate in grocery stores or museums. An interaction between a positioning system and a survey would include noting that the survey device carried by a respondent has stopped for more than a minute in proximity to the disposable diapers. The stop in front of the disposable diapers may indicate that the respondent is trying to decide which brand to buy. This respondent may be a prime candidate for a survey on the decision process of disposable diaper buyers. The respondent would also be a prime candidate for a point-of-sale rebate on a package of diapers (from the marketer's employer) upon completion of the survey. To control the distribution of surveys, the Digital Survey System can be programmed to distribute the survey to only those queuing locations that meet the survey requisites including the availability of survey devices with the necessary input or output capacities (touch screen, camera, suitable display screen, necessary memory to handle downloaded images, headphones, etc. ).

Not every device at a particular queuing location would necessarily have the particular special use features required for a particular survey., Thus the survey may use a Time, Place, and Manner qualification to limit the availability of the survey to those devices that match the hardware requirements for that survey. As an additional level of protection, the survey designer may have added a check that the required hardware is not only present on a particular survey device but is functioning properly before qualifying the survey device to run the survey.

Additional control on the Time, Place, and Manner of presenting a survey may include the parameters of ambient noise or light levels. The survey designer may have required that a particular survey not be presented if the ambient light is above a certain value so as to prevent the video images from looking washed out. The survey designer may limit the survey to devices that have been essentially still for several minutes to increase the odds that the survey respondent is sitting at a table or at the bar rather than moving about in a standing-room-only waiting room for a bar. In the preferred mode of the present invention, the survey devices are portable. Thus, it may be cost effective to use some Time, Place, and Manner instruments that are not part of the mobile survey device but provide real time information that may be used in certain survey qualifications. The ambient light level at a pool cabana, and the ambient noise level in a bar, are two examples of situations where a properly placed instrument could provide the ambient information without the need for individual instruments on the survey devices. Alternatively, the results from the instruments on all or some of the survey devices could be used to get the average light level or the average noise level. The readings taken from the survey device placed near a noisy drink blender may skew the results slightly, but averaging across time and various devices will provide a reasonable estimate of ambient noise.

L) Distributing the Respondent Profile

In order to make the respondent profile information collected during the first survey session with a respondent useful at subsequent sessions, the information must be made accessible to other queuing locations. As the number of respondents and queuing locations grows it will become more difficult to move information about a given respondent to all queuing locations. The movement of information to queuing locations can be done in a number of ways within the ability of those of skill in the art. The respondent profile can be maintained at each location where the respondent has completed a survey. The local copies of the user profile could be updated in real time, but the preferred mode would be to update the files at off-peak communication periods during the night or at some weekly interval. The local copy of the user profile could be discarded after a period without use at a given queuing location. Several schemes are possible for distributing the respondent profile to queuing locations before the respondent answers a survey at that location. Local copies of the user profile could be distributed to all participating locations in the city or county where the respondent has completed a survey. Local copies of the user profile could be sent after the respondent selects a list of queuing locations to receive the local copy of the user profile. The user profile could be downloaded to the queuing location upon request from the respondent upon the respondent's arrival at the queuing location. The request from the respondent could come though the survey device; through a separate device that is used for such requests, though the survey device when docked to provide for higher communication speed when loading profiles into the survey device, or through the survey specialist at the queuing location.

FLOWCHART

The preceding sections have described the various elements in the process of distributing surveys and collecting the results. Before describing a preferred implementation of these steps in an objected-oriented-programming language, it will be useful to quickly run through the fundamental steps to highlight the sources of information and the general sequence of events.

Figure 2 contains a general flowchart for the process for the distribution and processing of a survey. For the convenience of the reader, the elements of Figure 2 are generally verbs or process steps. These elements will have numbers in the 2xxx series. Figure 3 contains a diagram of the various sources and holding places for information. For the convenience of the reader these elements will have numbers in the 3xxx series.

The following example of the process will refer to Figures 2 and 3. In order to promote focus on the elements in a certain order, element numbers will be introduced when the element is introduced rather than when the element is merely referenced in passing. In order to provide context, the example will contain details for a specific marketer, survey, respondent, queuing location, and so forth. These are but details and not limitations on the scope of the invention. An example of a detail is the attributes of the survey device. In this example, the survey device has sufficient memory to store the various elements referenced below. Other options would be to have a survey device with more limited memory but the ability to access the Digital Survey System through any suitable wireless connection, or through any one of a number of connection ports distributed through the queuing location. The use of a docking station in this example provides guidance on implementing the Digital Survey System in a situation where wireless communication is not the selected option.

In order to have a central story line for this example, the Survey 3000 (defined below) is followed from creation to completion. Technically, the survey does not go from the central Digital Survey System to the local queuing stations and then into the survey device. Copies of the survey are made and sent based on the survey created and stored in the central Digital Survey System. However, for ease of reading, the various copies are not given unique element numbers.

A) The Creation of the Survey Step 2000 Create the Survey .. Note - to show the movement of the Survey 3000 through the various devices, the same reference number is used throughout. It is recognized by those of skill in the art, that there will actually be copies of the Survey 3000 at the various levels of the system such as a template copy on Queuing Location Digital Survey System computer and a template copy on Survey Device. In the preferred mode, the Survey 3000 is a combination of interrelated elements including: the presentation of the material to the respondent; the qualifications required for becoming a survey respondent; any demographic distribution plans, incentives for respondents and queuing locations; and control measures to be used to start and stop the survey process.

Note that as a practical matter, the creation of the Survey 3000 and the various components to the survey will likely be a team product from the Marketer 3500 and one or more Digital Survey System specialists on the Digital Survey System Survey Support Team 3510 that are well- versed on the various qualification information that already exist in the Digital Survey System, the distribution of various types of survey system devices, the impact of adding several restrictive qualifications on the amount of time needed to obtain a given sample size, and other practical information. A Programming Specialist 3520 may be used to write any new objects or routines needed to build this survey. Ultimately the Programming Specialist 3520 reduces the survey components discussed below to computer logic suitable to the computer system to be used for the Digital Survey System and makes the required associations so that the various components work in unison to deliver the intended presentation to qualified respondents and deliver the various credits and survey responses as set forth below. This particular survey has several objectives, one is to gather information about current attitudes, another objective is to increase the desire for international travelers to consider a visit to Turkey as a vacation destination. After completing the qualification stage, the survey objectively gathers information to measure the respondent's knowledge and predisposition to travel to Turkey. After completing the information gathering stage, the survey then walks the respondent through a number of questions that are not designed to collect information but are designed as a opportunity to respond to earlier answers with rebuttal information to misgivings or commonly-held misperceptions. The survey then walks the respondent through several options for a visit to Turkey that would mesh with respondent's self report of favorite activities. The final stage of the survey repeats questions about attitudes and fears to see if the survey and its tailored pitch has altered the respondent's views about scheduling a vacation in Turkey in the coming year.

In order to provide additional detail, Step 2000 creation of the Survey 3000 is broken down into several sub-steps. In actual practice the various portions of the survey are created as a unified whole since each piece effects the others.

Step 2005 Create the Survey Presentation Scheme 3010. Decide what questions need to be answered within the survey and what questions should be skipped or added depending on information known about the respondent. Make initial decisions about the types of audio or video files that may need to be displayed with the survey.

Step 2010 Create Survey Qualification Scheme 3020. The Qualification Scheme 3020 includes input from the Marketer 3500, Digital Survey System Survey Support Team 3510, and if needed the Programming Specialist 3520. The Survey Qualification Scheme 3020 is typically created in parallel with creating The Survey Presentation Scheme 3010 as there are many interactions between the survey and the qualification scheme. The Survey Presentation Scheme 3010 will typically use information from the qualification phase to customize certain portions of the presentation of the survey to a particular respondent The Survey Qualifications Scheme 3020 may include Respondent Qualifications 3022, Locale Qualifications 3024, and Time, Place, and Manner Qualifications 3026. The Time, Place, and Manner Qualifications 3026 may include restrictions on the type of survey device used or the ambient conditions. The Survey Team 3535 comprising the Marketer 3500 and Digital Survey System Survey Support Team 3510 can decide which qualifications can be satisfied by prior responses saved in the respondent profile, or session record. The Survey Team 3535 can decide which qualifications can be satisfied by implication rather than by explicit question. The Survey Team 3535 decides what material from the qualification information must be passed with the set of responses sent to the marketer. In some cases the qualification information is not useful for survey results since there may be several parallel paths of qualification to take the survey and thus, not all surveys will have answers to some qualification parameters. Ultimately the Programming Specialist 3520 reduces the efforts of the group to computer logic.

Step 2020 Create Survey Verification Scheme. The Survey Verification Scheme 3030 contains the decisions of the Survey Team 3535 on which parameters from the qualifications or the response need to be verified before issuance of the credit and which need to be verified before inclusion of the results in the tabulated results. During this step the team decides whether the verification can be done within the survey device, local to the queuing location, or at the central survey processing center. There is a trade-off in minimizing costs in terms of inconvenience to the respondent (need to transmit or dock and then wait for verification), and the need to limit the survey to locations that can load the verification logic onto the survey device or make it available to all survey devices. In some cases a partial check of parameters may be sufficient to limit credits to those who made a serious attempt to answer the survey. A more detailed check may require a number of steps that would take too much time for a instant-credit system. Thus the possibility exists that a survey response will qualify for a credit and not qualify for inclusion in the final survey results.

Step 2030 Create the Demographic Distribution Scheme. The Demographic Distribution Scheme is the implementation of the desire by the Marketer 3500 to force a distribution within the qualified groups. For example does the marketer want to have a 50/50 split or some other fixed distribution between male and female respondents. While both genders are qualified to take the survey, the use of gender to force a distribution makes the one survey into two surveys with gender as a qualification for each survey In this instance the Marketer for the Travel Turkey Survey does not want to force any specific distribution of qualified respondents.

Step 2040 Create the Survey Incentive Scheme 3050. The marketer 3500 with input from the Digital Survey System survey support team 3510 selects an appropriate credit or premium with the survey. The goal is to choose a credit that is likely to get the number of desired responses within the desired period without spending more of the marketer's budget than necessary. The team will discuss the need to make regional allowance in the amount of the credit so that the credit is roughly as attractive to a respondent in New York City as to one in a lower cost area. The team can discuss whether the credit should be for an item (like an appetizer within a price range) or for a dollar amount that can be as a credit against any retail item at the queuing location. The team can discuss whether the credit should be one that can be banked with the respondent profile so that the respondent can use the credit at another time, or another time and location.

Step 2050 Create the Survey Control Scheme 3060. The Survey Team 3535 decides the start and stop dates for the survey and whether any other criteria is going to be used to automatically terminate the survey (such as obtaining 1000 responses, an email from the Marketer 3500 requesting communication to all relevant queuing locations to disable any copy of the survey that has not been started, or a drop of a stock market index by more than 10%). In this case the Marketer 3500 desires a minimum of 1000 survey response sets from qualified respondents. The Market 3500 elects to risk having to pay for a few extra responses rather than delay the completion of the survey process with a tapering scheme that limits the distribution of the survey to only 1000 survey copies. The copies are moved one at a time to a queuing location so that at any one queuing location there is only one copy of the survey at any given time (even if the copy is sitting idle in a survey device when a potentially qualified respondent elects to fill out another survey.)

Step 2060 Complete Reduction of Survey Concepts to Integrated Computer Logic within this step send the survey off for completion by the programming professional. Finalize the links between the survey components and the related elements to a survey to produce the Survey 3000. Add an estimated time to complete to each survey to use as a criteria for respondents to pick surveys that can be completed with some margin of spare time in the expected queue time.

Step 2065 Receive Pre-Payment for Accumulated Responses For Marketers using the Digital Survey System for the first time, the Digital Survey System management requires prepayment for the survey set to be accumulated and delivered to the Marketer 3500. As described below, the Digital Survey System will provide transfer payments on a nightly basis to the various queuing locations. Thus the Digital Survey System management wishes to minimize exposure to loss by requiring an estimated payment up front and then making any necessary credit or invoice at the delivery of the accumulated responses to the Marketer. Depending on the incentive scheme use, the actual price may vary from the estimated price. For example there may be variations in price of the incentive between locations or regions. Step 2070 Load and Enable Survey. The Survey 3000 is placed in the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 and added to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System Pending Survey List 3610. Create the necessary files or objects to contain the results of the survey and handle the administration of credits to respondents, payments to queuing locations, movement of a completed response set from a respondent or the accumulation and transmission of a cluster of response sets from a number of respondents.

After the survey and ancillary programming preparations are completed and the current date falls within the start/stop range for the survey, the survey is made available to queuing locations that meet all qualifications for queuing location such as locale qualifications, and the ability to meet various Time, Place, and Manner qualifications including such things as having the appropriate survey devices or input/output devices required for the survey, having jazz performances on a regular basis, serving breakfast, or selling disposable diapers. The distribution of surveys to queuing locations could be done by pushing the survey to locations that qualify or by allowing queuing locations or survey devices with the capacity to communicate to the central survey location to pull surveys down. A particular doctor's office may choose not to pull down a survey for a herbal remedy that the doctor does not recommend. In the alternative, the doctor's office may be set to pull down all surveys for which it is provisionally qualified and then the queuing location management may elect to suspend or delete a survey from the local pending survey list.

B) Actions at the Queuing Location

Step 2400 Prepare Queuing Location to Participate in Digital Survey System. A Queuing Location 3400 agrees to host a set of survey devices. This step is unrelated to the creation of Survey 3000 except for the obvious limitation that the queuing location must complete its work while this particular Survey 3000 is on the Digital Survey System Central Computer System Pending Survey List 3610 in order for the survey to be available at the Queuing Location 3400. In this case the Queuing Location 3400 is a restaurant. The management of the queuing location 3400 and the Survey System Sales Specialist 3540 work out the details on: the number of and types of survey devices; the communication needs between the survey devices and other components; the various options for providing communication links (such as use of wireless links, a network that allows connecting the survey device at any one of a large number of ports distributed throughout the waiting area, the use of docking stations at the beginning and end of a session); the use of ambient condition instruments; the use of biometric instruments; the process for downloading and storing respondent profiles; the process for uploading information; and the process for distribution of credits to respondents with respondent profiles and to respondents that want to remain anonymous. There are many sub-steps to preparing a queuing location to participate with the Digital Survey System but detailing these would detract focus from the process of creating surveys and collecting survey results. Many of the sub-steps will be referenced in the subsequent steps of this discussion. The various sub-steps for getting a queuing location prepared to participate in Digital Survey System are well within the general skill set for system designers and installers when provided with this patent and information accessible to those of skill in the art.

Step 2410 Prepare Locale Profile. The Survey System Sales Specialist 3540 works with the management of the Queuing Location 3400 to fill out the Locale Profile 3410 information which includes among other information, the range of Time, Place, and Manner conditions that can be satisfied within this location. Step 2420 Prepare Time, Place, and Manner Status File. The links between any on-site instruments and the Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3490 should have been completed by the hardware installation (not shown on either Figures 2 or 3). The process for manual updates to the one or more attributes in the Time, Place, and Manner status file is explained. The queuing location is taught that a timely update of the performance field from bridal fashion show to live jazz will result in more survey choices for the jazz patrons and thus more completed survey credits flowing into the queuing location.

Step 2430 Connect to Receive Sub-Set of Pending Surveys. The Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 is connected by any conventional communication network to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600. (naturally, element 3600 could be one of a number of regional or industry specialized computers rather than one central computer). During this connection, the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 first checks if there is an update for the Locale Profile. In this case the Locale Profile 3410 is different (in fact is it brand new) as compared to the Locale Profile 3411 (empty) stored for this queuing location on the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600. After comparing the information in the Locale Profile with the qualifications for the various available surveys, the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 provides an updated (in this case new) Queuing Location Set of Surveys 3431 for which the queuing location is potentially qualified to provide to respondents. Typically the Queuing Location Set of Surveys 3431 provided to any one queuing location is going to be a small sub-set of the total Set of Surveys 3430 on the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600. The word "potentially" comes from the provision of the range of possible Time, Place, and Manner circumstances contained in the Locale Profile 3410 will qualify the queuing location to receive surveys that will not become available to respondents until specific Time, Place, and Manner criteria within that range are satisfied. Step 2440 Review, Delete, or Limit the Surveys in Set. Management of the new Queuing Location 3400 view the list of available surveys in the downloaded Queuing Location Set of Surveys 3431 including the marketers offer for credits/handling fees associated with the surveys. To check to see if the survey is something that the queuing location wishes to offer, the queuing location may request to see the survey questions for a particular survey offered by a marketer that is not a competitor (in this case a restaurant or a night club). The queuing location thus elects to suppress a survey by a new magazine because the queuing location owner believes that many of his customers will find some of the questions offensive. Likewise the restaurant elects to suppress surveys benefiting a national chain of restaurants that has a franchise across the street from this Queuing Location 3400. Step 2450. Add Local Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions. The management of queuing location 3400 adds a Local Time, Place, and Manner Restriction Set 3440 onto the Turkey Travel Survey 3000 and each of the surveys in the Queuing Location Set of Surveys 3431 using a tool built into the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. The default local Time, Place, and Manner restriction for this queuing location is to limit the availability of surveys so that surveys are only available to respondents when the estimated time to complete the survey is less than 60% of the current estimated time to get a table.

C) The Respondent Arrives.

Step 2500 Respondent Offered Survey Device. The Respondent 3550 arrives at the Queuing Location 3400. The Maitre D' 3560 offers a Survey Device 3450 to the Respondent 3550. Respondent 3550 declines offer to create a new respondent profile since Respondent 3550 already has a Respondent Profile 3070 from previous experiences with the Digital Survey System. Step 2510 Respondent Provides Identifier. A Survey Device 3450 is waiting docked in Biometric Docking Station 3475. The Respondent 3550 signs his name on the Biometric Signature Instrument 3460 connected to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. The Biometric Signature Instrument 3460 collects and passes the Signature Profile 3465 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. The Signature Profile 3465 is used as a way to identify the Respondent 3550. Since an earlier encounter between this Respondent 3550 and another queuing location with Biometric Signature Instrument 3460 has added this Biometric to his Respondent Profile 3070, the respondent does not need to provide his Respondent Profile Identification Number 3075 to the Survey Device 3450 to pass through the Biometric Docking Station 3475 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. Step 2520 Obtain a Copy of the Respondent Profile. This Queuing Location has opted not to obtain respondent profiles in anticipation of a respondent coming to the queuing location. Instead, this Queuing Location but will maintain a set of respondent profiles for all respondents that have used the Digital Survey System at this queuing location within the last six months. Although the Respondent 3550 is a steady customer of this Queuing Location 3400, this is the first time that he has used the Digital Survey System at this location. The Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 receives the Signature Profile 3465 and obtains a Copy 3471 of the Respondent Profile 3470 from the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600.

Step 2530 Load Respondent Profile into Survey Device. The Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 receives a Copy 3471 of the Respondent Profile 3070 and loads a second Copy 3472 onto the Survey Device 3450.

Step 2540 Respondent Provides his Point-of-Sale Identification Number. The Respondent 3550 is a long time customer with the Queuing Location 3400. In response to an invitation posted on the Survey Device 3450, respondent enters his Point-of-Sale Identification Number 3481 to the Survey Device 3450. The Survey Device 3450 passes the Point-of-Sale Identification Number 3481 through the Biometric Docking Station 3475 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 which is in communication with the Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480.

Step 2550 The Respondent's Point-of-Sale Profile is Loaded. The Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 returns a copy 3486 of the Respondent's Point-of-Sale Profile 3485 to the Survey Device 3450.

Step 2560 The Point-of-Sale Profile is Linked to the Respondent Profile. The Survey Device 3450 now has access to additional information about the respondent from the Respondent's Point-of-Sale Profile 3486 such as the information that this respondent frequently purchases fine cigars and cognac while visiting this Queuing Location 3400. Depending on the surveys selected, the information about cigar purchases may be used to qualify him for surveys addressing cigar preferences or a mouth cancer survey. The information from the Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 will be used to trigger additional questions and a verification routine in a life insurance application if he chooses to fill out a life insurance application as his choice for a survey. It is a good idea that critical information such as whether the applicant is a cigar smoker be checked with direct questions. In this case, if asked, the respondent would be able to key in that the cigars were purchased for a frequent dinner companion. The frequent dinner companion is a major client of the respondent's company, and one likely to request a cigar every time the respondent takes the client out to dinner.

Step 2570 Update Time, Place, and Manner Status File. The Maitre D' 3560 updates the Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3490 to indicate that the current wait for a table is now 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. The Time, Place, and Manner status file update activity is ongoing and does not trigger the following step 2575. However, it is good practice to update the Time, Place, and Manner status file since the Time, Place, and Manner status file effects the choice of surveys available to the respondent (and possibly the survey process within a selected survey). Step 2575 Load other Qualifying Information. Provide a Copy 3491 of the latest Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3490 to the Survey Device 3450. Provide a Copy 3412 of Locale Profile 3410 to the Survey Device 3450.

Step 2580 Download Survey-Device Survey Sub-Set. Make copies of all surveys that match the known information about Respondent 3550 from the Queuing Location Copy of the Respondent Profile 3471 and the Point-of-Sale Profile 3485 (or copy of Queuing Location copy of Point-of- Sale Profile 3485 if one is passed from the Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 rather than made accessible). Filter out surveys disqualified by the Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3490 (for example ~ eliminate from consideration those surveys with an estimated time to complete in excess of 60% of the 45 current wait for a table). Filter out surveys based on the Survey Device Attribute File 3455 for this particular Survey Device 3450. The Survey Device Attribute File 3455 confirms that the high resolution graphics components requested by the Marketer 3500 are functioning. This current information for this particular Survey Device 3450 is a final check for device capabilities. The Survey 3000 would not have been provided to this Queuing Location 3400 if the Locale Profile 3410 did not indicate the availability of at least some survey devices that could offer the requisite graphics support. The result of all these filters is a Survey Device Survey Sub-Set 3495 of surveys for the Respondent 3550 to consider for selection.

D) Undock and Complete Survey

Step 2600 Undock Survey Device. Respondent 3550 undocks the Survey Device 3450 from Biometric Docking Station 3475 Step 2610 Select a Survey. The Respondent 3550 carries the Survey Device 3450 and moves to a seat in the lounge to wait for his table. Once seated the respondent looks at the list of surveys in the Survey-Device Survey Sub- Set 3495. The respondent selects a Survey 3000 that identifies the topic as international travel and lists the associated credit for this twenty minute survey as a free dessert or a travel book that will be shipped to respondent's home or office. Since the respondent knows he is able to select a dessert, if he does not want the book, he selects Survey 3000.

Step 2620 Complete the Qualification Phase. After Respondent 3550 indicates to the Survey Device 3450 the desire to try Survey 3000, Survey 3000 begins to present questions to satisfy the remaining qualifications for Survey 3000. Respondent 3550 answers additional specialized qualifying questions about the number of times that the respondent has traveled to Europe, Asia, or Africa. After the respondent indicates that he has traveled to these continents several times for vacations and is undecided about his next destination, Respondent 3550 had successfully completed the remaining qualifications to receive this survey 3000.

An answer of "yes" from the respondent to the qualifying question "have you already booked arrangements for vacation travel to any country outside of the United States?" would have been a disqualification for that path to qualify since the Marketer 3500 wanted to focus on people that do not have a pending vacation booked overseas.

Since there was only one path of qualifications for this survey, the Survey 3000 would have politely terminated and returned the Respondent 3550 to the Select a Survey Step 2610. During this hypothetical second go-round with the Survey Selection Step 2610, this Respondent 3550 not be offered as an option of selection this Survey 3000 as his earlier answer would have disqualified him from taking this survey.

Step 2630 Complete the Survey. Respondent 3550 is presented with the core presentation of Survey 3000 beginning with a segment to record the respondent's views about visiting Turkey. The Respondent 3550 provides his responses to the information gathering section of the survey. Per the intent of the Marketer 3500, it is not readily apparent that the next section of the survey is actually a set of questions created to allow the survey to present the various salient features about a visit to Turkey such as the temperature, favorable exchange rate, proximity to other vacation destinations, and the archaeological sites. In short, the Survey 3000 uses this information from the Respondent 3550 to provide a semi-customized sales presentation. This sales pitch portion of the Survey 3000 uses the survey device's high resolution color screen and graphic accelerators to display brief videos on the Survey Device 3450. The brief videos include views in vivid color from a helicopter of some of the archaeological sites as well as close ups of friendly Turks inviting the respondent to visit. The survey makes a pitch for the respondent to choose to receive a color book with more details about vacations in Turkey. The survey indicates that videos depict scenes shown in the Turkey Travel Guide. The Survey 3000 asks if respondent wishes to have a copy of the Turkey Travel Guide shipped as a gift for completing this survey. The respondent elects to receive the book and is asked to confirm his shipping address. The shipping address is confirmed by the Respondent 3550 rather than input because this shipping address was previously added to his Respondent's Profile 3070 and passed down into the copy of the Respondent Profile that exists on the Survey Device 3450.

Step 2640 Review Short Circuit Data submissions. At the end of the survey presentation, the Survey 3000 presents a List of Short Circuit Information 3620 that will be sent ultimately to the Marketer 3500 with the survey responses entered during this survey. The List of Short Circuit Information 3620 would include: any information that was obtained from the Survey-Device Copy of the Respondent Profile 3472, the Survey-Device Copy of the Point-of-Sale profile 3486, material stored on the survey device from answering other surveys or qualification questions for other surveys during this same visit to the queuing location (not applicable here), and material from Time, Place, and Manner sensors (such as ambient light, ambient noise, etc.). If the respondent is comfortable with the process, the respondent can skip the review. Note that for certain surveys that are applications, a careful review by the respondent can catch errors from heuristics that have not worked. For example, while filling out a life insurance application or some other survey at this particular Queuing Location 3400, this Respondent 3550 may need to correct a false conclusion that he regularly smokes cigars since this information deduced from his paying habits recorded in the Point-of-Sale Computer System. A conclusion that he smokes cigars rather than erroneously conclude that his prior purchase of cigars were for his consumption rather than for handing out to his client.

If the respondent approves of sending all the information on the List of Short Circuit Information 3620, then the Survey Response Set 3630 (which includes this additional information) is now completed. Generally there is little need to review the inputs to explicit questions since these items were just entered. However, if the respondent thinks that an entry error or a misunderstanding has caused a mistake, most surveys would offer a chance to review the collected information and correct or purge the survey results.

Step 2650 Review Update to Respondent Profile. Respondent 3550 is presented with a list of new information to use as Profile Updates 3077 that will go into the Survey-Device copy of Respondent's Profile 3472 and eventually uploaded to the central Respondent Profile 3070. The respondent may delete any item that the respondent does not wish to have stored in his or her profile. Deleting items will increase the likelihood that the respondent will need to provide this information again during some future survey, but that is a choice open to the respondent.

Step 2660 Update Survey-Device copy of Respondent Profile. The Survey Device copy 3472 of the respondent profile 3470 is modified to include the material reviewed and approved by respondent.

The survey device copy of the respondent profile 3472 is automatically modified to indicate that the Respondent 3550 has completed this Turkey Travel Survey 3000 so that this particular Turkey Travel Survey is not presented to the respondent at future visits to queuing locations with Digital Survey System survey devices.

E) Offloading Results

Step 2700 Dock the Survey Device. After completing the Survey 3000, the Respondent 3550 walks to a Waiting Area Docking Station 3640. Once docked, the Survey Device 3450 removes the Survey 3000. The Survey Device 3450 also offloads the Survey Response Set 3630, and the Profile Update 3077. While in the Waiting Area Docking Station 3640, a Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3490 is downloaded into the Survey Device 3450 to replace the existing Survey-Device Copy Time, Place, and Manner Status File 3491. The offloaded Survey Response Set 3630 is passed with the Survey Device Identification Number 3457, respondent's Point-of- Sale Identification Number 3481, and his Respondent Profile Identification Number 3071. The respondent is offered the option to select an electronic newspaper for downloading into the Survey Device 3450 as an alternative to answering another survey in the remaining time. An Electronic Newspaper 3650 is downloaded into the Survey Device 3450 as a form of entertainment for the respondent while awaiting his table.

Step 2710 - Run Local Verification. The offloaded Survey Response Set 3630 is subjected to the Local Verification Checks 3035 on the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 requested in the Survey Verification Scheme 3030.

Some errors such as an incorrect postal code can be caught locally and a correction entered at the

Local Digital Survey System Control Console 3660 after a staff member of the queuing location asks the respondent for a correction. Correction of the error will allow the Survey Response Set 3630 to be sent to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 for subsequent processing and the issuance of both a credit for the Respondent 3550 and the various handling fees to the queuing location 3400.

Step 2720 Transmit Survey Response Set. After the Local Verification Step 2710 is completed and without any uncorrected detected problem, the Survey Response Set 3630 is provided over a communications network to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600.

Step 2725 Transmit Update information for the Respondent Profile. The Profile Updates 3077 are sent to update the Digital Survey System Central Computer System copy of the respondent profile 3070. This update is not needed for the authorization of premium, but it is a good practice to update the profile during the same communication session so that the respondent profile 3070 is updated in a timely manner.

Step 2730 Authorization of Premium. Some surveys may use a verification scheme that requires a second level of verification processing upon receipt by the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 for such problems as a respondent that is attempting to collect a series of premiums for answering the same survey at a string of queuing location within walking distance of one another. Note that surveys thought attractive to those who would attempt to collect the same premium by filling out the survey twice would not be available to people without preexisting respondent profiles in order to prevent people from responding without providing their profile Identification number or creating a new Identification number with fake information at each queuing location. No such verification step was requested for this survey 3000. The Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 authorizes the premium for the Respondent 3550. Since the respondent requested the Turkey Travel Guide book, an instruction is sent to the Digital Survey System Premium Shipping Department 3080 to ship a premium to the respondent. A Credit Authorization 3682 is sent to the queuing location 3400 that lists the various identification numbers for the Respondent 3550 and lists the Survey Device Identification Number 3457 for this Survey Device 3450 for use by the Waitperson 3570 to in match the survey premium to the survey respondent. The Survey Device Identification Number 3457 is very important for instances where the respondent elects not to provide his Respondent Profile Identification Number 3070 or biometric substitute to the system because he or she prefers not to add information to a centralized data file. Respondents who feel strongly about this may elect not to obtain a respondent profile but will be opting out of the benefits of having a respondent profile.

Step 2740 Respondent moves to the Table. The Respondent 3550 takes the Survey Device 3450 with him to his table when the table is ready.

Step 2750 Dock the Survey Device. The Management of the Queuing Location 3534 chose to have the Waitperson 3570 handle the administration of Digital Survey System premiums. Other queuing locations are likely to choose one of the following: the cashier, someone who handles incoming calls for reservations, someone working in the coat check room, or some other person. The implementation of the Digital Survey System at this Queuing Location 3400 calls for the Waitperson 3570 to move the Survey Device 3450 from the respondent's dinner table to a Staff Docking Station 3670 in a staff work area.

When docked, the Survey Device 3450 communicates the identifying information for the Respondent 3550 and the Survey Device 3450 through the Staff Docking Station 3670 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. The waitperson 3570 provides the Point-of-Sale Transaction Number 3487 for the upcoming meal for the Respondent 3550 through the Survey Device 3450. The Point-of-Sale Transaction Number 3487 is passed through the Staff Docking Station 3670 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420. Step 2760 Collect Credits for Survey .The Credit Authorization 3682 for completing the survey is transferred from the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 to the queuing location Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 and then linked to the Point-of-Sale transaction for this meal by Point-of-Sale Transaction number 3487.

F) Providing the Credit A Credit Slip 3681 is printed at a Digital Survey System Printer 3680 to be given to the respondent. In this case, it is a slip noting that a copy of the Turkey Travel Guide book is going to be shipped as a gift for the respondent's participation in the Survey 3000. In other situations, it is a credit slip telling the respondent that a dessert of respondent's choice (or up to a value of X, or a dessert of a particular type) will be provided for at no cost as a gift. The Turkey Travel Survey 3000 requested that the respondent choose between premium choices during the closing portion of the survey. Other surveys less interested in shipping the premium may leave the choice of premium to be decided during the dinner or other experience at the queuing location. If the decision was left until dinner, the respondent could apply the credit to his transaction after making his choice of a dessert or an appetizer if that was the choice presented by the survey. Step 2770 Reset Survey Device. Once the credit slip 3681 has been printed, the Survey Device 3450 is emptied of all surveys, profiles, electronic newspapers, and other files related to the use of this Survey Device 3450 by this Respondent 3550. This particular Survey Device 3450 is put into a rack for movement with other survey devices back to the area where the Maitre D' greets incoming diners. Step 2775 Presentation of Credit Slip. The waitperson 3570 presents the credit slip 3681 to the Respondent 3550.

Aside—An alternative to shipping the book from the Digital Survey System shipping department is to provide inventories of the books to key queuing locations. At this stage the waitperson would places the credit slip in an envelope in the box of books and provides the book to the respondent. This sort of scheme requires extra planning and cooperation from the queuing locations and the costs of shipping and loss associated with shipping the premium to various locations. A third alternative is to provide a queuing location only copy of the premium so that the respondent can flip through the book while waiting for his dinner and then look forward to receiving the copy to be shipped to his home. Step 2780 Record Exercise of the Credit. Waitperson 3570 inputs a Record of Providing Credit 3685 using a Point-of-Sale Input Device 3489 to both inform the Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 that the Credit Slip 3681 provided to the Respondent 3550 and to complete the delivery of the premium (since it will be shipped directly to the Respondent 3550). If the respondent had selected a dessert then the credit would not be used until the payment for the dessert.

Step 2790 Request Payment from Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer. The Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 reacts to the exercise of the credit by crediting the Waitperson 3570 according to the Survey Incentive Scheme 3050. Many surveys will provide a generous tip for the waitperson in order to promote cooperation with the Digital Survey System by the operations staff of the queuing location. Here in the case of the Turkey Travel Survey, the waitperson is provided with a Tip 3690 equivalent to generous tip for a standard dessert so that the staff does not discourage respondents from choosing the book. A list of tips earned for various surveys is maintained in the Point-of-Sale Computer System where it can be viewed by the waitperson. The tip payment for the Digital Survey System is an added line item to the paycheck for the waitperson. The Point-of-Sale Computer System 3480 sends a payment request 3700 to the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 for reimbursement for the tip 3690 given the Waitperson 3570 and a Service Charge Request 3710 for completion of this survey transaction according to the Survey Incentive Scheme 3050.

Step 2800 Request Payment of the Queuing Location. The Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 sends the Payment Request 3700 to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 which accumulates the payment requests. Note that if the respondent had selected the dessert instead of the book, the cost of the dessert would be transferred for reimbursement as well.

Step 2810. Payment of Queuing Location. Later that night, an electronic payment is made by the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 to move money from the Digital Survey System Bank Account 3730 to a Queuing Location Bank Account 3740 specified by the queuing location in the Locale Profile 3410 to pay for all of the charges levied that day to the Digital Survey System by that queuing location.

G) Distribute Updated Respondent Profile Step 2820 Distribute Updated Respondent Profile. The updated respondent profile 3070 is downloaded by those queuing locations that have opted for such automated downloads. As indicated in the text associated with Step 2520, queuing locations may choose to keep current copies of many respondent profiles (keeping all would be somewhat extreme), keeping very few, or keeping none at all. The actual plan will depend greatly on the queuing location and the population that the queuing location tries to please. Some queuing locations may request updates for any respondent that has completed a survey at their location within the last six months. Some queuing locations may request updates for every respondent profile with a home or work address within a specified range of postal delivery codes that matches the postal delivery codes from which most of the customers are drawn for that queuing location. Some queuing locations may cater to a narrow spectrum of the population and may request all respondent profiles meeting some other set of criteria. Other locations may opt to avoid the expense of storing the profiles and may simply obtain a copy of the profile for use during the respondent's visit. These queuing locations will obtain the respondent profile on demand and thus will not receive the updated profile until the respondent visits the queuing location.

H) Complete Collection of Survey Responses Step 2830 Complete the Set of Response Sets. Unrelated to the distribution of the respondent profile and several days later, the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 receives a Last Response Set 3631 from a respondent to the Turkey Travel Survey 3000. This Last Response Set 3631 is verified and added to the Accumulated Results 3635 for the Turkey Travel Survey 3000. This Last Response Set 3631 makes one thousand accumulated responses. Step 2840 Send out Terminate Survey Command. Since the Marketer 3500 requested and authorized 1000 responses, the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 sends out a Terminate Survey Command 3750 to remove the Turkey Travel Survey 3000 from the list of possible surveys. The Terminate Survey Command 3750 is sent to every queuing location that has downloaded the a copy of the Turkey Travel Survey 3000. Step 2850 Add Additional Response Set. An Extra Response Set 3632 for the Turkey Travel Survey 3000 arrives at the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600. Since many of the survey devices operate by downloading the surveys that a respondent may be qualified to answer from the local Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420, it is not unusual for some respondents to complete or even start a survey after a Terminate Survey Command 3750 has been sent to the queuing locations. To promote goodwill with the respondent population and with the queuing locations, the respondent and the queuing location are always paid for surveys completed and submitted in good faith.

As described in the text associated with the Survey Control Scheme 3060, the risk of extra survey responses is reduced if the survey distribution is highly controlled as the number of accumulated results approaches the target number of results. A method with a very high degree of control would be to create one thousand copies of the survey at the Digital Survey System Central Computer System Pending Survey List 3610 but pass the survey without the ability to act as a template for making additional copies. The survey would be downloaded from the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 to the Queuing Location 3400 but would come with a timer. If the timer times out before the survey is started, then the survey becomes unavailable to the queuing location and sends a message back to the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 that it has timed out. The Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600 would put a new copy of the survey into the Digital Survey System Central Computer System Pending Survey List 3610 with the same survey count number as the survey that timed out. Eventually all 1000 copies would be returned, one survey for each of the survey control number (1 to 1000).

Many other control systems to control the collection of surveys to a set amount should be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art. However, extra control comes at the cost of extra overhead and a slowing of the availability of surveys to potential respondents.

In the present example, the Marketer 3500 and the Digital Survey System management have contracted that the Marketer 3500 will pay for a small number of extra survey responses.

Step 2860 Send Accumulated Responses to Marketer. The Extra Response Set 3632 is processed at the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600. After a set dead-band time without any additional responses coming into the Digital Survey System Central Computer System 3600, the accumulated results 3635 are sent to the Marketer 3500. The Marketer 3500 is presented with a Correction Figure 3760 for any underage or overage with respect to the estimated payment paid by the Marketer 3500 before the surveys were distributed.

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES

Additional examples of the flexibility of the Distributed Survey System are provided below. To enhance readability, these examples are provided without the step and element format provided in the previous example. The names of the people and the companies are fictitious.

Example 1: To illustrate the abilities of the Digital Survey System, imagine a prospective marketer, Sally Smith of Credit Bank, who wishes to promote the Credit Bank credit card. Sally decides to target restaurants whose entrees range in price from $10 to $25 and she is only interested in the dinner crowd at such restaurants. Sally designs an application form (a type of survey) that requires the survey respondent's name, address, telephone, date of birth and permission to issue a card in the survey respondent's name. Sally offers a credit worth $5 of the survey respondent's meal. In addition, Sally seeks potential candidates for Credit Bank's investment services. Therefore, she offers an additional $1 rebate to survey respondents who are heads of household over 40 and fill out a request for information on Credit Bank's investment services. The survey format is converted into a marketer agent/survey agent pair that represents the desired information.

The survey agent is distributed to all locales that meet Credit Bank's specifications. Since Sally Smith of Credit Bank chose to limit access to the dinner crowd the survey agent is disabled before 5pm and after 9pm. Continuing with the example, "Susan", a single mother of one, is having a dinner date. While she is waiting to be seated, she learns of the promotion and decides to participate. She picks up the handheld device and chooses the Credit Bank survey agent. She fills out the Credit Bank application. While fulfilling the Credit Bank application she discloses the fact that she is a head of household. At this point she is offered the opportunity to request the investment services information for an additional $1 rebate. She decides to also request the investment services information.

Upon successful completion of the survey, Susan is credited with the $6 rebate against her meal. Susan is pleased to receive an immediate credit that can be applied to her meal. The restaurant is pleased that sales of more expensive appetizers and desserts have risen since the restaurant customers have started receiving immediate credits. The restaurant may also receive a service charge of 30% on the rebate and provide tip to the waitperson for the food covered by the rebate and 5% to the host person that encourages waiting patrons to fill out surveys. Susan is also happy to learn about some of the great financial products that Credit Bank has to offer.

Example 2: Another scenario is where the Digital Survey System is implemented in a chain of apparel stores, JT Jones. JT Jones would like to learn more about the chain's clientele and the clientele's impressions of JT. JT Jones decides to use the Digital Survey System to survey JT clientele. So JT Jones decides to offer a pair of JT Jones designer sunglasses to customers that participate. "Jamal", a fashion conscious professional, appreciates the opportunity to receive a pair of quality sunglasses for a few moments of his time. So Jamal fills out the survey. Before granting the credit, the Digital Survey System performs one or more checks to catch responses not made in good faith. The Digital Survey System checks include checks that the submitted personal information appears to be legitimate and the Jamal is not attempting fill out the survey multiple times to get multiple pairs of sunglasses. After the Digital Survey System checks approve the information provided by Jamal as likely to be legitimate, Jamal is given an authorization code. JT Jones employees use the code to charge the sunglasses against the promotional expense account in the Point-of-Sale Computer System. Within minutes, Jamal is wearing the JT Jones designer sunglasses that coordinate with the new jacket he bought at JT Jones. As an aside this example highlights that the present invention is not limited to people waiting at a restaurant. By queuing location, what is meant is any place where people have time to fill out surveys. Thus a retail store is a queuing location, as that term is used in this description and the claims that follow. For example, many retail clothing stores or departments within stores cater to a specific. gender or age. Thus, when couples shop together, one spouse often has idle time while the other spouse is looking at clothes or trying them on. This phenomenon is so prevalent that some retail stores provide chairs and magazines so the idle spouse does not get bored. Example 3: The Digital Survey System may also be installed in a business like an Oil Changes 'R Us. "Jack" comes into Oil Changes 'R Us and is sent to the waiting area while his vehicle is serviced. To entertain himself, Jack picks up the survey device and browses through some informational content. While using the survey device, Jack types in an identifying piece of information' like his phone number. The Digital Survey System then uses that identifying information to do a survey respondent lookup on Jack, through an interface with Oil Changes 'R Us' Point-of-Sale Computer system, the provides information that a 1985 Mustang™ automobile is linked to the phone number Jack provided the survey device. So the survey device presents Jack with an advertisement talking about the maintenance schedule for that model car sponsored by the Joe's Auto Service located next door to Oil Changes 'R Us. Jack browses the advertisement and decides whether he needs to stop by Joe's for maintenance on his automobile.

As of late 1999, the preferred mode for implementing the invention is a wireless network of handheld survey devices such as the PalmPilot™ VII or other Personal Digital Assistant device ("PDA") communicating directly to information servers over the internet. However, an initial implementation will be realized using handheld survey devices such as the PalmPilot™ lux which can be synchronized with a local computer. The local computer is then responsible for interacting with the information servers. The local computer serves as the connection point between the handheld survey devices and the information servers that maintain the databases and provide the responses to the marketers. In this scenario, the interactions between the different survey devices that are part of the network happen at the point of synchronization using a cradle similar to the Hotsync cradle used by PalmPilot™ computers. The development of devices, wireless transmission of digital information, and computer languages especially object oriented languages is expected to continue at a rapid pace.

Thus, the capabilities of the various components used to implement the system are expected to make future implementations of the present invention look very different from the current preferred arrangement of hardware and software duties. It is important to focus on the claimed invention not the hardware and specific software used to implement it.

The invention is described in terms of software components that use the available hardware resources to perform their tasks. The components represent behavior and therefore do not necessarily represent discrete software entities. SAMPLE IMPLEMENTATION SCHEMES

Figures 4 - 15 provide samples of implementation schemes for the Distributed Survey System method described above. Implementation choices will be driven by the current state of wireless communication options, storage costs, transmission speed and reliability across the Internet or other suitable networks, and the development of software tools.

In order to give additional clarification on the scope of the invention, and to provide guidance for implementing the invention in different programming environments, applicant provides the following information.

In FIG. 4 the interaction between all of the software components is represented at the highest level. The components are:

A response 4010 is a collection of information collected from a survey respondent with possible additions of information known or inferred about the user based on information collected outside of this survey response by a specific survey agent. Each response has a unique identifier that identifies that specific instance of a response and its corresponding survey agent. A credit 4020 is a specific type and form of reward associated with a particular survey agent. This can take on a plurality of forms, such as rebates, coupons or discounts. Each credit has unique identifier that identifies that specific instance of a credit and its corresponding response.

A survey agent 4030 is responsible for presenting the customer with the survey questions using the output means provided by the survey device. The survey agent of the preferred mode includes a set of survey questions for a particular survey and other qualification criteria such as locale criteria, Time, Place, and Manner criteria, and respondent qualification criteria. They are responsible for collecting the response using the input means provided by the survey device. When the survey respondent is finished responding to a particular response the survey agent delivers this information along with the agent's unique identifier to the palm manager. A survey agent represents the information desired from the survey respondent, the properties regarding the target audience and the type and form of credit associated with this information. The survey agent also performs rudimentary sanity checks to prevent fraud and falsification of information.

A palm manager 4040 handles all survey respondent requests for surveys. The term palm manager is used here to remind the reader that the preferred mode puts the palm manager inside the survey device. The palm manager could be in a device in communication with the survey device whether by wireless link, a carrier signed on the power supply connection, docking station, or conventional wired connection. The palm manager present a list of available survey agents to the survey respondent. When a survey respondent selects a specific survey agent, the palm manager activates the survey agent on the survey device. When the survey respondent has finished, the palm manager collects the survey from the survey agent. Once the palm manager receives the completed response, the palm manager uses the electronic transfer means to forward the response to the collector. Using the unique response identifier, the palm manager tells the credit agent the type and form of credit to authorize. Since some survey agents have a specific target audience they may not be presented to the survey respondent until the survey respondent has shared some information with the palm manager that would classify the survey respondent in the target audience. This can be accomplished if the survey respondent chooses to identify himself using an unique identifier assigned to him on previous occasions or a piece of identifying personal information.

A credit agent 4050 authorizes a specific type and form of credit based on the information provided. The credit agent reports all credits authorized to the collector so that they can be reconciled with the rebate paid to the participating retailer.

A collector 4060 collects surveys from all palm managers at a retail queuing location. Then, the collector updates the palm managers with any new survey agents and removes any expired survey agents. Once the responses and credits have been collected from the various palm managers, the collector uses the electronic transfer means to forward the collected surveys and the collected credits to the server manager.

The server manager 4070 collects the surveys and corresponding credits from the collectors. Then, the server manager updates the collectors with new survey agents and removes survey agents that have not been selected during the selection window for that survey agent or that have been terminated with a termination command. A termination command is a command that could be used to stop a survey once the marketer discovers a flawed design in the survey or has received sufficient information and does not wish to pay for additional completed surveys. The server manager presents the appropriate responses and credits to the various marketer agents that correspond to the survey agents. A marketer agent 4080 organizes and formats the responses and credits collected for each specific marketer. Each marketer agent corresponds to a specific survey agent distributed to the retail locations. The marketer agent provides the surveys to the marketer and invoices the marketer for the credits.

A marketer 3500 is a marketer that has requested the survey information and will be invoiced for the information and credit costs. Each marketer can create a new marketer agent customized to the information that they desire to gather.

FIG. 5 shows some examples of the hardware that could be used to support the functionality. The first example shows a system where the survey devices 5011 communicate using a wireless directly to the information server 5001. A variation would be for the survey devices 5011 to communicate with a local server that would then relay the communication to the information server 5001. The information server 5001 supports the server manager 4070 and the marketer agents 4080. The information server collects all the responses and credits to a central location and does processing that needs to occur across all survey information. The survey devices 5001 provide a mobile platform that can be distributed to many survey respondents in a single queuing location 3400 such as a retail location. The survey devices 5011 support the functionality of the palm managers 4040 and survey agents 4030. The functionality of the collectors 4060 and credit agents 4050 can be supported in a variety of manners based on the scale of the operation for performance and convenience reasons. The collectors 4060 and credit agents 4050 could be integrated on the survey devices 5011, supported by an intermediate layer of computers distributed at the retail locations such as the Queuing Location Digital Survey System Computer 3420 from Figures 2 and 3, or integrated on the information server 5001.

A second example within FIG. 5 shows a set of survey devices 5012 that do not have the capability to interface directly with the information servers 5002. Instead the survey devices are hardwired to an intermediary computer 5022. As mentioned above, the mobility of the survey devices 5002 may be quite high if there are a large number of ports distributed throughout the queuing location. One technology for providing many ports without running special wire is to use the existing electrical circuits as a carrier for the computer communication. In such a case, it is reasonable to delegate certain responsibilities to this intermediary computer 5022. For instance, the collector 4060 and credit manager 4050 might be served better from this intermediary computer 5022. However, if the survey devices 3450 have the communication capabilities necessary, it is reasonable to do without the intermediary and have the survey device implement the functions of the collector 4060 and credit manager 4050.

The importance of the topology is less significant than the fact that the Digital Survey System allows the marketers 3500 to specify the survey they wish to create and the Digital Survey System manages the distribution, acquisition, fulfillment and collection of the agents FIG. 6 illustrates how the invention would administer a survey using a survey device 6000 in a queuing location 3400. Step 7010, palm manager 4040, displays a list of survey agents 4030 that are available to the survey respondent 3550. The list of survey agents 4030 may be interspersed with the informational/recreational content on the survey device 6000.

Step 7020, the survey respondent 3550 selects a specific survey agent4030 such as the agent for a Turkey Travel Survey 3000. Step 7030, the palm manager 4040 activates the survey agent 4030.

Step 7040, the survey agent 4030 methodically presents survey questions including audio or video material to the consumer/respondent 3550.

Step 7050, the survey respondent 3550 answers the survey questions. The survey agent 4030 may alter the composition of the questions presented based on the answers provided by the survey respondent 3550. Step 7060, the survey agent 4030 returns the completed survey 6010 to the palm manager 4040. FIG. 7 illustrates how the surveys are collected from the various handheld survey devices 3450 in the queuing location 3400.

Step 7070, the palm manager 4040 transmits all completed surveys 6010 and authorized credits 6020 to the collector 4060. The collector 4060 transmits a list of expired survey agents 4030 and credit agents 4050 to the palm manager 4040.

Step 7080, the palm manager 4040 deletes all expired survey agents 4030 and credit agents 4050.

Step 7090, the collector transmits all new survey agents to the palm manager 4040. The palm manager 4040 incorporates the new survey agents into its list of active survey agents.

FIG. 8 illustrates one embodiment of the authorization of credits. In Step 7100, the palm manager 4040 activates a credit agent 4050 with the information regarding the respondent's completed survey 6010.

In Step 7110, the credit agent 4050 authorizes the retailer of the credit to be applied to the survey respondent's bill. The survey respondent's bill is reduced by the amount of the credit and the survey respondent pays the remainder of the adjusted bill. Thus receiving an immediate benefit from the marketer 3500.

In Step 7120, the credit agent 4050 reports the exercised credits back to the collector 4060.

FIG. 9 illustrates on embodiment of how the surveys are collected from the various queuing locations. In Step 7130, the collector 4060 transmits the completed surveys 6010 and exercised credits to the server manager 4070. In Step 7140, the server manager 4070 evaluates the survey agents to determine which agents have expired either by fulfilling the number of desired responses, finishing the desired the survey period or the marketer requesting termination of the electronic survey— such as when the electronic survey was associated with a promotion that the marketer terminated.

In Step 7150, the server manager 4070 transmits the list of expired survey agents 4030 and credit agents 4050 to the collector 4060. The collector 4060 deletes all expired survey and credit agents. In this push-based example, the server manager 4070 transmits all new survey agents 4030 to the collector 4060. The collector 4060 incorporates the new survey agents 4030 and credit agents 4050 with its existing agents. Note that this example did not involve any locale qualifications so it is possible that surveys will be pushed to the location and never used because the location does not meet one or more qualifications for the survey. (Such as needing bowling alleys at the location in order to make it possible to give a survey to people who are waiting for a bowling lane.)

FIG. 10 illustrates how the survey information is processed and delivered to the marketer. In Step 7160, the marketer agent 4080 receives the new survey response sets from server manager 4070. Step 7170, the marketer agent 4080 verifies the information provided by the responses using available phone number, address and other published databases. Then the information is added to the marketer database, locale database and survey respondent database.

Step 7180, the marketer agent 4080 organizes and formats the responses according to the marketer's specification. This includes removing all identifying information not specifically released to the marketer by the survey respondent 3550 from the survey information to be provided to the marketer. In this way, the anonymity and privacy of the survey respondents 3550 can be preserved.

Step 7190, the marketer agent 4080 records and credits each individual queuing location 3400 for the costs of the credits provided to the survey respondents 3550 redeemed or exercised at the retail location at the queuing location.

Step 7200, the marketer agent 4080 transmits the survey information to the marketer's survey data repository 4095. Step 7200, the marketer agent 4080 then invoices the marketer 3500 for the survey response sets collected and credits delivered. The present invention is not limited to the implementation of an object oriented language. The functions present in the first explanation would be regrouped for an implementation under a structured language (non-object oriented).

As a structured design, the invention represents the conjunction of five processes. The processes are survey distribution, survey collection, survey selection, survey acquisition and survey respondent lookup.

FIG. 11 illustrates the distribution of surveys from the information servers to the various locales. Step 8010, the first aspect of survey distribution is the input of the marketer's information. In Step 8020, the survey specification is created including the survey targets and associated credits. In Step 8030, the marketer's information is then added to the marketer database. Step 8040, the Digital Survey System then determines which locales are likely to have the survey's intended targets. The locale database is queried and a determination is made as to whether each locale matches the target. If the locale does match, the credit appropriate for that locale is determined and the survey is distributed to that locale. The credit for a locale is a function of the value of the credit authorized by the marketer and the types of credit uses previously environmented for that queuing location.

FIG. 12 illustrates the collection of surveys from the various locales to the information servers. For a system with direct communication between the survey device and the information server, the first step (8050) is the information server receives the responses and associated survey respondent information from the survey device 3450. In step 8060, then the survey respondent information is verified against available databases of phone numbers, addresses and other information. If the information does not seem legitimate, it is flagged and handled as an exception by either an exception routine or review by a person.

If the information seems legitimate, then Step 8070 is conducted so that survey respondent profile is looked up in the survey respondent database. If no profile exists for this survey respondent, a new survey respondent profile is created. The new survey respondent information is added to the survey respondent profile.

Step 8080, the information server looks up the survey's marketer in the marketer database. In Step 8090, the set of responses is added to the marketer's survey database. In Step 8100 the new set of survey results is made available to the marketer. Making "available" is likely to include working to organize and format the new set of survey responses to the marketer's specifications and before transmitting the results to marketer. As mentioned above, the survey response sets could be sent one by one or in one aggregated collection.

FIG. 13 illustrates on embodiment of the process of selection of surveys to present to the prospective survey respondent. Step 8110, the survey device is activated. In Step 8120, after the prospective survey respondent activates the survey device, the survey device may request that the prospective survey respondent provide some piece of identifying information. As discussed above, the survey respondent may choose whether to provide identifying information. In Step 8130 ,if the prospective survey respondent provides identifying information, the survey device looks up the survey respondent's profile. (See Figure 15 and associated text for details on the user profile lookup).

Sometimes knowledge of the credit type may identify the marketer and bias results. Thus, in the preferred mode the credit is identified, described generally as a promotional item or just described as "???". If the survey respondent does not provide identifying information at this point, the survey device will perform the survey respondent lookup as soon as identifying information has been provided. This may happen during the course of a survey response.

In Step 8140, the survey device looks up the available surveys from those received by the locale at which this survey device is deployed. Step 8150 illustrates the selection of a subset of surveys bases on a qualification criteria. In this case the qualification criteria is whether the survey's time constraints match the actual time of day. The time constraint check allows marketers to specify orange juice surveys for breakfast time and liqueur surveys for after 10 p.m.

In Step 8160, the survey device evaluates whether the information know about the potential survey respondent disqualifies the potential survey respondent from the target audience of the survey. If all the constraints on the target audience for the survey are met or still unanswered, the electronic survey is added to the survey list visible to that particular prospective survey respondent. The process of evaluation is repeated for each electronic survey until all available surveys have been evaluated. Then as Step 8170, the surveys on the list are displayed. Variations include randomly selecting an electronic survey from the list and inviting the prospective survey respondent to complete that survey. The prospective survey respondent may decline the offered survey and be presented with another survey option. Yet another alternative is to display the entire list of available electronic surveys that are present at the queuing location and then provide an indication to the prospective survey respondent of the subset of electronic surveys that the prospective survey respondent is qualified, disqualified, or may be qualified to answer. The last category is for electronic surveys that have qualification criteria that has not been adequately addressed by information available to the electronic survey. In this latter case, the electronic survey begins by asking the unanswered qualification criteria until the respondent is qualified or disqualified. If disqualified the respondent can be thanked and returned to the survey list. The surveys may be interspersed throughout recreational/informational content on the survey database.

FIG. 14 illustrates one implementation of the process for acquiring information from the survey respondent. Step 8180, the survey respondent chooses a specific survey. Step 8190, the survey device presents the information related to the survey. Step 8200, the survey respondent responds to this presented information. Step 8210, if the information provided by the survey respondent is identifying information, this is added to the survey respondent information.

In Step 8220, information provided in response to the presented information is added to the file containing the respondent's survey responses. At loop branch 8230, the process of presenting information and processing the responses continues until the survey is completed or terminated.

Step 8240 is performed when a survey has been completed. In Step 8240, the file containing the survey respondent's response and the survey respondent information are sent to the information servers. In Step 8250, the survey credit is authorized. The authorized credit is given to the survey respondent.

FIG. 15 describes how a survey respondent lookup is carried out. Step 8180 occurs after the survey respondent ("user") provides identifying information, Step 8120. Step 8180 consists of the survey device performing a survey respondent lookup by sending the identifying information to the information servers. The identifying information is used to perform a lookup in the survey respondent database on the information server.

At Branch Step 8190, if the response of the survey respondent database is that there is no survey respondent profile that corresponds to that identifying information, then a new survey respondent profile is created.

At Step 8200, the survey respondent profile that corresponds to that identifying information is returned to the survey device. Those skilled in the art will recognize that the method and apparatus of the present invention has many applications and that the present invention is not limited to the representative examples disclosed herein. Moreover, the scope of the present invention covers the range of variations, modifications, and substitutes for the system components described herein, as would be known to those skilled in the -art.

The legal limitation of the scope of the claimed invention is set forth in the claims that follow along with the legal equivalents of the claims that follow.

Claims

CLAIMS I claim:

1. A top level data processing system for collecting survey results from one or more survey respondents at a plurality of queuing locations, comprising: a computer processor means for processing data; a storage means for storing data on a storage medium; a first means for storing information constituting a set of survey questions; a second means for storing information constituting a qualification file for the set of survey questions; a third means for storing information constituting a for the set of survey questions; a fourth means for receiving information from a device that is not a present at the same location as the computer processor means; a fifth means for distributing survey sets to locations proximate to the queuing locations; a sixth means for accepting a completed set of survey questions based on a comparison of attributes of the survey respondent to a set of conditions in the qualification file; and a seventh means for transferring a credit proportional to the reward class for the set of survey questions for a set of completed survey questions.

2. A data processing system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a fourth means for storing a Time, Place, and Manner qualifications file.

3. A data processing system as claimed in claim 2 wherein the Time, Place, and Manner qualifications information for a queuing location is used to answer questions from the survey without presentation to the survey respondent.

4. A data processing system as claimed in claim 2 wherein the Time, Place, and Manner qualifications information for a queuing location is used to personalize questions from the survey for presentation to the survey respondent.

5. A data processing system as claimed in claim 1 wherein a set of extra-survey information for particular survey is used to expedite the survey process by formulating proposed survey answers which are presented to the survey respondent to confirm.

6. A data processing system as claimed in claim 5 wherein the extra-survey information contains information from a superset of the sets of sources of: a) information provided by the survey respondent at the start of the session for qualification to see the survey as a choice; b) information provided by the survey respondent during the same session as this survey as qualification information after a survey was presented as a choice; c) information provided to a survey interview in this same session; d) information provided to an unsuccessful attempt to complete this same survey during this same survey session; e) information provided to an earlier survey session by someone providing the same identification key as the current survey respondent; f) information about the survey device for the survey device being used by the survey respondent; and g) information sensed by instruments at the queuing location.

7. A data processing system as claimed in claim 6 wherein the information sensed by instruments at the queuing location includes sensing parameters selected from the group consisting of time between responses by the survey respondent; the ambient temperature; ambient noise level; ambient light level; and movement of survey device.

8. A data processing system as claimed in claim 2 wherein the Time, Place, and Manner qualifications information for a queuing location provides information to prevent a survey respondent from having the option of starting a survey.

9. A data processing system as claimed in claim 2 wherein the Time, Place, and Manner qualifications information for a queuing location provides information to prevent a survey respondent from having the option of completing a survey.

10. A data processing system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising an eighth means for transferring a set of information containing at least some of the information contained in the returned information response to a second computer processing system that is remote from the computer processing system.

11. A data processing system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a ninth means for converting a set of survey requirements into a set of survey questions.

12. A data processing system as claimed in claim 11, further comprising an eleventh means for receiving a set of survey questions from the second computer processing system.

13. A method for collecting a set of response sets to electronic surveys from qualified respondents from one of a plurality of queuing locations through the use of a computer system comprising:

inputting an electronic survey into the computer system; inputting a set of one or more qualification criteria; transmitting the electronic survey and at least some of the qualification criteria to a first queuing location in the plurality of queuing locations; evaluating the information returned from the first queuing location sometime after the transmission of the electronic survey and the transmitted qualification criteria, to detect the return of a complete response set from a first respondent meeting the transmitted qualification criteria; and after detection of the complete response set from the first respondent meeting the transmitted qualification criteria, sending a credit to the first queuing location for the complete response set from the first respondent.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the electronic survey into the computer system includes the step of receiving the electronic survey from a remote computer and making the received electronic survey accessible to the computer system.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the step of receiving the electronic survey from the remote computer includes receiving the survey from an inter-network connection with the remote computer.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the step of receiving the electronic survey from the remote computer includes receiving the electronic survey from a telephone connection with the remote computer.

17. The method of claim 14 wherein the step of receiving the electronic survey from the remote computer includes receiving the electronic survey on physical media containing output from the remote computer in a format that can be input into the computer system by an input device connected to the computer system.

18. The method of claim 13 wherein the inputting the electronic survey into the computer system comprises inputting questions and computer programming code to control the survey experience presented to a survey respondent at the remote queuing location.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed information from the respondent into questions presented to the respondent.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the respondent is offered a subset of questions based on information provided by the respondent .

21. The method of claim 20 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is offered a subset of questions based on information provided by the first respondent to another electronic survey at the same queuing location during the same survey response session.

22. The method of claim 20 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the respondent is offered a subset of questions based on information provided by the respondent to another electronic survey taken at a different queuing location.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is offered the option to approve the inclusion of one or more responses to the electronic survey into a respondent profile that can be used by logic in subsequent electronic surveys to alter the way the survey questions for the subsequent electronic survey are presented to the first respondent at a second remote queuing location.

24. The method of claim 18 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is asked to confirm certain responses when a tendered response does not match information about the first respondent available to the electronic survey.

25. The method of claim 24 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is asked to confirm certain responses when a tendered response from the first respondent does not match information provided by the first respondent to another electronic survey.

26. The method of claim 24 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is asked to confirm certain responses when a tendered response does not match information provided by the first respondent to another electronic survey completed by the first respondent at the same queuing location during the same survey response session.

27. The method of claim 24 wherein the computer programming code has the capacity to imbed logic in the electronic survey so that the first respondent is asked to confirm certain responses when a tendered response does not match information provided by the first respondent to another electronic survey taken at a second queuing location.

28. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the electronic survey into the computer system includes the step of receiving electronic files that include audio information to be included in the electronic survey.

29. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the electronic survey into the computer system includes the step of receiving electronic files that include visual images to be included in the electronic survey.

30. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the electronic survey into the computer system includes the step of receiving electronic files that include animation sequences to be included in the electronic survey.

31. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the electronic survey into the computer system includes the step of receiving electronic files that include video sequences to be included in the electronic survey.

32. The method of claim 13 wherein the electronic survey inputted into the computer system includes questions to request qualification criteria in addition to questions to collect survey responses from qualified respondents.

33. The method of claim 32 wherein the electronic survey inputted into the computer system includes logic to end the electronic survey before completion if the responses first respondent violate required qualification criteria.

' 34. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of inputting the qualification criteria into the computer system includes the step of receiving the qualification criteria from a remote computer; making the transmitted survey accessible to the computer system; and associating the qualification criteria with one or more electronic surveys stored within the computer system.

35. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria inputted into the computer system include qualification criteria for the type of queuing location to be eligible to receive the transmitted electronic survey.

36. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria inputted into the computer system include qualification criteria limiting the times of the week that the remote queuing location can make the electronic survey available for respondents to start responding to the electronic survey.

37. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria inputted into the computer system includes qualification criteria requiring that the first queuing location be offering certain services at the time the electronic survey is made available to the first respondent.

38. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria inputted into the computer system includes qualifications on the geographic location of the first queuing location.

39. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria inputted into the computer system includes qualification criteria limiting the transmission of the electronic survey to queuing locations with visitor demographics that meet certain criteria.

40. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria is operative with computer code transmitted to the first queuing location to satisfy a qualification criteria based on information retained in memory after the completion of an electronic survey previously completed by the first respondent during the same survey answering session.

41. The method of claim 13 wherein the qualification criteria is operative with computer code transmitted to the first queuing location to satisfy a qualification criteria based on information stored in memory in a local computer at the first queuing location.

42. The method of claim 41 wherein the qualification criteria is operative with computer code transmitted to the remote queuing location to satisfy a qualification criteria based on the respondent's user profile information stored in memory in a local computer at the first queuing.

43. The method of claim 13 further comprising the transmission of a survey window period to the first queuing location so that the first remote queuing location cannot present the electronic survey to the first respondent outside of the survey window period.

44. The method of claim 13 further comprising the transmission of a termination command so that otherwise un-expired electronic surveys stop being available for selection by the first respondent.

45. The method of claim 13 further comprising the transmission of a retail credit value to the first queuing location to provide an incentive for a qualified respondent to complete the electronic survey.

46. The method of claim 45 further comprising the step of converting the retail credit value into a first retail incentive at the first queuing location and into a different retail incentive at a second queuing location.

47. The method of claim 46 wherein the conversion of the retail credit value into the first retail incentive is performed at the first queuing location.

48. The method of claim 45 wherein the payment to the first queuing location for the response set results in the availability of the first retail incentive to the qualified respondent in time for same- visit use.

49. The method of claim 48 wherein the payment to the first queuing location results in an offset for the qualified respondent against the bill otherwise owed by the qualified respondent to a retail establishment at the first queuing location.

50. The method of claim 48 wherein the payment to the first queuing location for the response set results in the availability of the first retail incentive to the qualified respondent in time for same- visit use with an option provided to the qualified respondent to choose to save the retail credit for use at another queuing location.

51. The method of claim 13 further comprising the steps of: sending the results of the complete response set to a survey requestor; and invoicing the survey requestor for the complete response.

52. The method of claim 51 further comprising the steps of: waiting for a notice from the retail establishment at the first queuing location of the redemption of the first retail incentive by the qualified respondent; and charging the survey requestor for the redeemed first retail incentive.

53. A Queuing Location Computer System for use in soliciting responses to electronic surveys a Potential Survey Respondent present at a queuing location comprising: a queuing location computer in turn comprising: al) a memory storage device; a2) a means for receiving a plurality of electronic surveys including both a first electronic survey containing questions for a Potential Survey Respondent from a Survey Computer System and a second electronic survey; a3) a means for receiving a plurality of qualification criteria sets from the Survey Computer System including a qualification criteria set applicable to the first electronic survey and a qualification criteria set applicable to the second electronic survey; a4) a means for receiving retail incentive information including retail incentive information for the first electronic survey and retail incentive information for the second electronic survey; a5) a means for communicating to a first Potential Survey Respondent, a list of a current set of available electronic surveys for which the first Potential Survey Respondent is a candidate for possible qualification to complete the electronic survey as defined by qualification criteria in the qualification criteria set; a first Survey Response Device; an input means for the first Potential Survey Respondent to provide input to the first Survey Response Device ; a linkage path for digital information between the first Survey Response Device and the queuing location computer; a means for Potential Survey Respondents to provide input to the Queuing Location Computer System carrying information relevant to the qualification criteria for the first electronic survey; a means for presenting information from the first electronic survey to the first Potential

Survey Respondent; a means for storing the responses to the first electronic survey from the first Potential Survey Respondent; a means for providing digital information to the Survey Computer System for information conveying at least some of the responses from the first Potential Survey Respondent; and a means for providing a retail credit to the first Potential Survey Respondent after qualification and completion of a set of survey responses to the first electronic survey.

54. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the means for providing digital information to the Survey Computer System conveying at least some of the responses from the first Potential Survey Respondent comprises a wireless communication link between the Survey Response Device and the Survey Computer System.

55. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the means for providing digital information to the Survey Computer System conveying at least some of the responses from the first Potential Survey Respondent comprises a docking station for connecting the Survey Response Device to the Survey Computer System.

56. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 55 wherein the means for providing digital information to the Survey Computer System conveying at least some of the responses from the first Potential Survey Respondent comprises a memory means in the Survey Response Device for storing responses from the first Potential Survey Respondent until completion of the first electronic survey before transmission to the Survey Computer System through the docking station.

57. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein a means for presenting information from the first electronic survey to the first Potential Survey Respondent includes a first video display system in wireline connection with the Queuing Location Computer System and electrically isolated from an Survey Response Device when the Survey Response Device is receiving input from a first Potential Survey Respondent based on the first Potential Survey Respondent's viewing of material on the first video display.

58. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the first Survey

Response Device is a Personal Digital Assistant Device having Survey Response Device memory means for storing the first electronic survey; the second electronic survey; a response set to the first electronic survey; a response set to the second electronic survey; and a user profile; a Survey Response Device processor for processing digital instructions; a set of Survey Response Device software for use in the performance of an electronic survey and interface with a first Potential Survey Respondent; the processor, software, and electronic surveys operating to dynamically customize the first electronic survey for presentation to the first Potential Survey Respondent; the processor, software, digital instructions, and memory means operative to store the responses of the first Potential Survey Respondent until the responses are transmitted by the digital transmission link to the Survey Computer System.

59. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 58 wherein the Queuing

Location Computer System accesses information about the queuing location, and the processor, software, and electronic surveys operating to dynamically customize the first electronic survey for presentation to the first Potential Survey Respondent based in part on information about the queuing location.

60. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 58 wherein the Survey Response Device memory means for storing includes the results from the first Potential Survey Respondent of the first electronic survey; and the second electronic survey operates in conjunction with the processor and the set of Survey Response Device software such that qualification criteria of the second electronic survey can be at least partially satisfied by answers provided by the first Potential Survey Respondent to the Survey Response Device in response to the first electronic survey.

61. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 58 wherein user profile is loaded into the Survey Response Device for the first Potential Survey Respondent through a digital connection established while the Personal Digital Assistant Device is in a docking station linking the Personal Digital Assistant Device to the Survey Computer System.

62. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 further comprising a means for the first Potential Survey Respondent to request the creation of a user profile.

63. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 wherein the first Potential Survey Respondent is provided with a digital information carrying device to enable the first Potential Survey Respondent to access the first Potential Survey Respondent user profile at a second queuing location that does not share a common Point-of-Sale computer system with the first queuing location.

64. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 wherein the user profile is stored on the first Survey Response Device for access during a subsequent use of the first Survey Response Device by the first Potential Survey Respondent after the use of the first Survey Response Device by a second Potential Survey Respondent.

65. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 wherein the linkage path for digital information between the first Survey Response Device and the Queuing Location Computer is used for movement of digital information such that the first Potential Survey Respondent user profile comes into existence in the Queuing Location Computer memory storage device.

66. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 65 wherein the Queuing Location Computer responds to a request to move a copy of the first Potential Survey Respondent user profile into the second Survey Response Device to reduce the amount of information needed for the first Potential Survey Respondent to input to the second Survey Response Device in order to qualify and complete a third electronic survey which is loaded into the memory of the second Survey Response Device.

67. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 65 wherein the request to move a copy of the first Potential Survey Respondent user profile into the second Survey

Response Device is satisfied by movement of the first Potential Survey Respondent user profile into the second Survey Response Device through digital link established through a docking station.

68. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 wherein the Queuing

Location Computer System transmits the user profile for the first Potential Survey Respondent to a central storage facility.

69. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 wherein the Queuing Location Computer System periodically receives user profiles from the central storage facility for a Potential Survey Respondent that has not created a user profile through that Queuing Location Computer System.

70. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 62 where the Queuing Location Computer System receives an updated user profile for the first Survey Response Device from the central storage facility where the updated user profile contains information provided by the first Survey Response Device to a second Queuing Location Computer System.

71. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the Queuing Location Computer System further comprises a biometrics input device for identification of the first Potential Survey Respondent.

72. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 71 wherein the biometrics input serves as a user identification key to distinguish one Potential Survey Respondent from another Potential Survey Respondent.

73. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 71 wherein the biometrics input device is attached to the first Survey Response Device.

74. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 further comprising a means for means for receiving retail incentive credits for the first Potential Survey Respondent after submission of a complete set of survey responses and needed qualification information from the first Potential Survey Respondent.

75. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 74 wherein the first Potential Survey Respondent may redeem the retail incentive credit in the form of an entertainment experience provided through the Queuing Location Computer System.

76. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 74 wherein the retail incentive credit for the first Potential Survey Respondent is made digitally available to a queuing location Point-of-Sale system to decrement the current bill associated with the first Potential Survey Respondent.

77. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 76 wherein the first Potential Survey Respondent can use the retail incentive credit for the first Potential Survey Respondent without reference to a user profile for the first Potential Survey Respondent.

78. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 74 where the first Potential

Survey Respondent can elect to digitally bank the retail incentive credit for use during a subsequent visit to the queuing location.

79. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 78, wherein the first Potential Survey Respondent can elect to draw upon a digitally banked retail incentive credit stored while at the first queuing location for use at a subsequent visit to a second queuing location that does not share a common Point-of-Sale computer with the first location.

80. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the means for presenting information from the first electronic survey to the first Potential Survey Respondent includes the capacity to add local advertising content that is unrelated to the first electronic survey.

81. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 80 wherein the local advertising content comprises advertising for items available at the current queuing location.

82. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 53 wherein the means for presenting information from the first electronic survey to a first Potential Survey Respondent includes the capacity to limit the presentations to specific time windows within the week.

83. The Queuing Location Computer System of claim 82 wherein the presentation of the first electronic survey is limited to times when the queuing location is satisfying a time-place- manner qualification.

84. The invention as described and illustrated in the specification and referenced figures.