Method and apparatus using consumer idle time for productive activities

This invention relates to a method of selecting a set of transactions, from a larger possible set of transactions, to present to a customer, given: the customer's history, a store's history and the time and day of the customer's activity; such that a maximum value is extracted from the available customer idle time without exceeding the idle time in a specified percent of cases. An apparatus and method present to a consumer information during consumer idle periods. A signal indicating the start of idle time is used to present to the consumer various offers. The interactions are planned based on previously acquired consumer data, the current transaction, the venue of the transaction, the time of day and the date of the transaction, and the estimated time available. The method of the invention collects information about the customer utilizing a point-of-sale terminal. Information concerning the customer's transactions are accumulated and analyzed and the resulting information is used to improve the efficiency of the customer's next interaction with the system. The efficiency increase results from a fitting of a set of possible dialogues, into the idle time, so as to select a set of dialogues and their order that will provide the highest value.