SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR UPDATING SHOPPING TRANSACTION HISTORY USING ELECTRONIC PERSONAL DIGITAL SHOPPING ASSISTANT

An electronic personal shopping system for communicating between a customer's personal memory store and point-of-sale terminals in a retail facility. Demographic profile data, a customer's transaction history data and a customer's current incentive indicia are stored in particular locations in a memory of a portable, machine-readable smart card. The smart card is adapted to interface with a store's check-out terminals and customer assistance, or kiosk terminals. Check-out terminals record a customer's most recent transactions in the customer's transaction history storage area and update a customer's current incentive indicia to reflect the most recent purchase. A customer is able to maintain a transaction history without intervention of a store platform computer. A customer assistance, or kiosk terminal, is able to develop promotional and personalized greeting messages by reading and analyzing the demographic profile, transaction history and incentive indicia information stored in the smart card to personalize the service offered to each individual customer.