Entries tagged with “mobile scanning” from Tools of Change for Publishing

The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.

This future just got one step closer today [July 12] with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, "a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you're out and about shopping." For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.

A previous Jupiter Research report stated that 70 percent of consumers surveyed had no interest in using mobile coupons, but the mobile world is evolving quickly. Semacodes or QR codes, two dimensional square barcodes, are one example. Using a cellphone camera, a consumer simply takes a picture of one of these codes and a phone with the correct software can translate it into a coupon or a URL leading to where a coupon can be found. These ads are popular in Japan and can be found everywhere from coffee cups to billboards. Now Google is working with the technology in the U.S. under AdWords.