Tag: mobile commerce qr codes

Mobile commerce toy and grocery shops are becoming especially successful.

Stores and shopping malls made out of images and QR codes are becoming the next big thing in the trend toward virtual shops and mobile commerce as a whole, as they seem to be popping up in a growing number of cities.

Companies are seeing the chance for profit in stores with nearly no space required and no physical merchandise.q

Instead, they are made up of poster displays of the products that are available, and QR codes that are associated with them and that can be scanned with smartphones in order to make a purchase. The entire mobile commerce experience is simply a digital version of shopping in a real store. The consumer simply needs to have a look at the items that he or she would like to purchase, scan to add them to a virtual shopping cart, and then complete the purchase by checking out.

Scanning the virtual store QR codes can be accomplished with any free or paid scanner app.

Once the items have been purchased, they will be delivered to the consumer’s home within a matter of hours or days, depending on the product and the virtual store’s policies. This trend got started in 2009, and since that time they have been spreading quickly all around the world. They have been found in many locations in the United States, Canada, Korea, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Ireland, Argentina, Chile, and others.

Singapore and Toronto, Canada have been the locations with some of the most common locations for these QR code shopping malls to appear. The most common have been for grocery and toy stores, but others have also made their mark. In Toronto, for example, Well.ca had a massive virtual store in April 2012 at Union Station, the city’s largest commuter train subway station which sees over 200,000 commuters every day. According to Well.ca, this was a tremendous success and it considerably increased the sales that they experienced from the displays as well as from the virtual store through its advertising effect.

Now, Walmart and Mattel will be headed to the same location to create a virtual toy store based on QR codes in the hopes of being equally as successful.

Scan delivers 25 million copies of its software

Despite reports that QR codes are unpopular amongst consumers and are diminishing in popularity, Scan, leading barcode scanner makers, has announced that its scanning application of the same name have been downloaded 25 million times. The company is now offering version 2.0 of its software, which provides a number of new features that are meant to make consumers more interested in scanning QR codes and other barcodes. As in previous versions of the software, Scan touts simplicity as the best way to provide service to consumers.

Software allows consumers to scan various types of barcodes

The new version of Scan is simple to use; users only need to point their mobile device at a QR code or other barcode and the application will do the rest of the work. The scanner recognizes QR, UPC, EAN, and ISBN codes and is available for the iPad Mini and the iPhone 5. The software can even make use of a device’s flash to allow its camera to scan codes in the dark.

Platform can help businesses keep track of QR codes

Scan has been growing steadily for more than a year. The company was founded in 2011 and was able to raise more than $1.7 million in financing earlier this year. Scan provides numerous services based on QR codes, such as code generation for websites, business cards, and billboards. Businesses can use the Scan platform to keep track of the performance of the QR codes they use, allowing them to tweak the reach of their marketing campaigns to better suit the demographic that is using their codes the most.

QR codes growing in popularity as mobile commerce devices

Scan notes that it processes more than 27 million codes every month. This suggests that QR codes are much more popular than some might believe. The codes have been gaining momentum as a mobile commerce tool, which may be part of the reason why they have been seeing more use in recent months. Retailers, in particular, are showing interest in QR codes because of their potential use as a sales mechanism for mobile consumers.