Image yourself walking into store. When you see a product
you like to buy in front of you, you pull out your smart phone and scan the QR code; after a
few simple you are able to complete the purchase of the product and have it
shipped to you or your friend as a gift. This is essentially what Target aims
to do for this holiday season.
“Beginning Oct. 14, Target will showcase the top 20 toys on
the main aisle in-store to make finding gifts easier for time-strapped holiday
shoppers. For added convenience, each of the top toys will have a QR code that
can be scanned to purchase the toy directly using a mobile device and ship it
for free to anyone, anywhere in the U.S.”
This approach, selling the merchandise through the new
digital medium, is interesting not new, because it seems that we have never seen to be used around us. From our marketing strategy class, we learned that South Koreans had
already started using their smart phones to scan the QR codes and order
groceries as they are waiting for trains in the subway. Why hasn’t consumers
in the US started doing the same thing? I think there are probably two reasons.
First, majority of the US consumers are either not tech savvy or do not want to
be tech savvy. We may be able to attribute such attitude towards differences in
culture between the West and the East. Secondly, QR codes in the US are primarily
used as marketing tool of introducing new products. Consumers may have developed
perceptions of the QR that they are not used to think of QR that can help them
to make purchase. Target is one of first companies that is trying change all
that. It will be interesting to see the result from Target’s sales from QR codes,
because this result can guide the most innovative uses of QR codes to come in
the future.
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