Tag Archives: QR code

The Sound of Savings

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You won’t hear it with the human ear, but the next time you are in a big chain store, Shopkick may be calling out your name!

According to a recent article at Forbes.com, Shopkick is a location-based customer loyalty app like Foursquare or Gowalla, but with an important difference:

…it doesn’t use the phone’s GPS. Instead, Shopkick uses a different technology. It plugs in a small box inside each participating store. The box emits a high frequency sound that humans can’t hear. When the Shopkick app is opened, it recognizes the sound so that it knows that the person is actually in the store.

The bottom line is engagement. Remember a few posts ago we were talking about the difference between TV ads that are just on, shooting dumbly out into the atmosphere, versus web ads that tease you and make you click? If you click the web ad, you are already interested in the product. That’s engagement, and the same principle applies with Shopkick. You physically go into the store, you turn on the app, and you wait for the deals to come to you. And Shopkick claims a success rate of 45% that, if it’s true, is a really high number!

For now, because it requires hardware, Shopkick is mainly in large chains like Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, Disney and so on. Foursquare uses existing satellite tracking, and it is popular with smaller independent stores. But of course, they are looking into copying Shopkick’s success. Hopefully the winner will be YOU.

So have you used Shopkick? What do you think?

Get All Your Shopping 411 with QR Codes!

Look familiar? You may not have paid them much attention, or known what they were, but these funny-looking symbols are the latest thing designed to improve your shopping experience.

They’re called QR scan codes (for Quick Response), and they are the 21st century answer to the traditional bar code. But while the bar code is designed for the seller – to improve efficiency in pricing and inventory – the QR is all for YOU, baby!

All you need is a smartphone with a camera, and an app that costs little to nothing to download. When you’re out shopping and you see the QR code on the label or on the display, turn on the app, point your camera and…that’s it. You are taken to a website that tells you all about the product.

There was a fun little article in the New York Times this week about shoppers in the Home Depot and Lowe’s using QR codes to learn how to select and care for trees for their yards. Which is funny because that is exactly how I used mine!

Another time I was heading downtown for a day of activities. I had one of those local weekly entertainment magazines, but wasn’t thrilled about carrying it around all day. Then I saw the QR code at the top of the “What’s Happening” section. I zapped it, and now I had the entire listing stored in my phone.

So check out the article, and look around the next time you are out. I bet you start noticing these things everywhere! Have you already tried QR codes? Tell us about it!