Referral and Collaboration Based Social Media Platform for Brand Marketing, Brand Management, and Customer Relations Management

A marketing and CRM platform for restaurants, grocery stores, pharmaceutical companies, retail establishments, online eCommerce retailers, in conjunction with a vendor profile, customer profile, and social network is described. The platform may provide incentives, loyalty, discounts, sales, markdowns, barcode coupons and offers from vendors and customers, for engagement activity in-store or online or referral of customers to the vendor, customer, or group's social networks. The platform may recognize and identify people by device, RFID, or credit card/magnetic reader swipe; track, and analyze customer activity; issue rewards and rebates for transactions and milestones including birthdays or group purchases; provide analytics to the vendor; enable reviews, ratings, stars, scores, "thumbs up/down", indications of support and product interest; and suggest culinary, menu item, and vendor information. The platform may be accessible using stationary devices, cellular telephones, smartphones, mobile devices, smartcards, RFID cards, email, intelligent point of sale terminals or electronic devices.