Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Retailers must jump on mobile shopping technology #QR Codes or be left behind.

By Jenny Lee,
Vancouver Sun
January 11, 2011

Mobile shopping is exploding with one-third of shoppers surveyed using mobile phones to visit retailer websites, according to a ForeSee Results survey.

Another 25 per cent of shoppers surveyed said they plan to use their smartphone for mobile shopping, according to ForeSee’s survey of 10,000 visitors to the biggest U.S. e-commerce websites during the Christmas 2010 shopping period.

This means more than half of all online shoppers are either already using or plan to use their smartphones for retail purposes and retailers must embrace mobile shopping or be left behind.

Ethical Bean not only offers mobile ordering so consumers can order and pay for a coffee while in transit (for later pickup at an Ethical Bean cafe), but has also included QR, or quick read codes on all its supermarket coffee packages so consumers can get detailed information the product while standing in the grocery aisle.

By simply picking up a bag of coffee and using their smartphone to read the QR code, consumers have quick, easy access to a wealth of information including not only on the country and district where that particular bag of coffee was grown, but the co-op it was grown in and how many members work there. There are maps, videos, organic and Fair Trade certificates, and the name and biographer of the particular operator who roasted this particular batch of coffee, along with the roast parameters such as time and temperature. Read more)

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