Bye Bye Wallet, Hello SmartPhone: Why It's Inevitable

 

(This article was previously published by Talent Zoos'  Digital Pivot )

Bye Bye, Wallet.  Hello, Smartphone.

  I'm not the first to write this obviously. But now I'm really beginning to believe it.

 You see,  I have a strange visual attraction to graphs showing a sharp-rising, positively accelerating exponential curve. These shapes are magical mental magnets for me. I catch a glance of one out of the corner of my eye and I just have to go read the piece.

So it was in reading MediaPost this week , I found a fine specimen, Barcode Scanning Up 700% This Year.  The main take-away?

Barcode scanning via cell phones is increasing at a phenomenal rate.

The new report  by ScanBuy, a barcode tech provider, shows that there were more mobile barcode scans done in July 2010 than in all twelve months of 2009.  

What's going on here?

Smartphone users are starting to use their cameras to scan product information and, yes, buy.  According to the report,  Android users are leading the charge (no pun intended) accounting for 45% of scanner users, Blackberry owners follow  at 21% and iPhoners like me bring up the rear at 15%. (No surprise, some Android platform phones and more recent Blackberries  comes with a built-in scanner. You have to download the scanner if you are an iPhone user. I'm sure Apple is paying attention to this one. ;-))

So why am I saying from reviewing this one curve and this one report that you are highly likely be doing  mobile purchasing in one year? 

True, barcode scanning may be only  geeksugar  today, but here are a few consumer buying reasons why this is an inevitability.

Four Reasons from the Consumer Perspective

1. You'll be able to purchase  products which tell you more about themselves before you buy them  If you don't have a smartphone and/or haven't had the scan-before-you-buy experience,  check out this YouTube of an android scanner video.

2. You'll Pay Less for the Same Product.  Available today as one of the most popular downloadable apps on smart phones today, your internet-connected phone can tell you before you buy a product if someone is selling it for less in a nearby store.

3. If you see a product you want to buy outside its original retail context (aka store), your cellphone scanner will tell you where to buy it.  Let's say you pick up an object at a friend's house and they can't remember where they purchased it.  You can simply scan the code to find out where to buy the object. (Do you think retailers and manufacturers like this feature too?)

4. This one's the coup de grace:  You'll only get a product discount if you're a  smartphone scanner-buyer.  Well-described in a recent NY Times piece on this same topic, BlueFly.com, webseller of designer clothes and accessories, is the first national U.S. retailer to use bar codes in its new "Closet Confessions" television commercials airing on Bravo.

As the Times describes,

When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com.

Advertisers Want a Mobile Purchasing Future Too

Now all we have to do is match the above four  compelling consumer reasons with retailer and advertiser motivations -- which also are considerable. It's clear from BlueFly's advertisement that by supporting QR (Quick Response) codes on-air BlueFly relocates and extends the advertising experience onto the internet.  What's more the extended-ad is targetted to only those who intentionally scan. (The efficiencies of this separation of ad time with content programming probably have not escaped Bravo.)

But  the most significant reason advertisers are lovin' this mobile purchasing future is this: As a mobile purchaser, you are self-identifying during the purchase, providing your valuable consumer data embedded right in the point of sale data, time-stamped and all. 

It's a "win-win" in 80's-speak:  Smartphone Buyer =  Smart buyer = Smarter Retailer.  And that's what makes for the sexy high-flying exponential curve  just screaming frictionless capitalism at us.