ShopSavvy and QR Codes – 'the skinny'

UPDATE: ShopSavvy for Android supports QR Codes.

Lots of our users ask why ShopSavvy doesn’t read QR codes. The answer is double, a) manufacturers and retailers in the US and Europe don’t use QR codes and b) QR aren’t typically related to produce identification. The simple answer is that QR codes don’t have much of something to with shopping and ShopSavvy is all about shopping. There is no technical cause we can’t scan a QR code – in fact our scanning libraries already scan a QR code. The problem with QR codes is that they usually include a URL or contact info – information that ShopSavvy can’t really use. Let me give you some background.

QR codes are two-dimensional codes (as seen on the right) that were created by a Japanese company called Denso-Wave back in 1994 to track vehicle parts during manufacturing. Unlike one-dimensional barcodes that only contain eight to seventeen digits, QR codes can contain up-to 7,089 numeric characters, 4,296 alphanumeric characters, 2,953 binary bytes or 1,817 Japanese characters. This data storage was VERY important PRIOR to the Internet. QR codes were invented about the same time as the World Wide Web and as a result the value of having an ‘un-connected’ barcode that held significant data became less and less important. Sure QR codes proliferated in manufacturing, supply chain applications and shipping, but outside of Japan and Korea their use in consumer applications has been almost non-existent.

So why aren’t they popular in consumer applications outside of Japan and Korea? Largely because if you can use iphone app scan to pdf and scan a one-dimensional barcode with an internet connect device brands, manufactures, retailers and advertisers have more control. They can provide different information to consumers based on time of day, day of week, season, location of user and so on. With a QR code that must be printed they have no control – whatever data existed at time of printing is the data that will be in the QR code. Why would anyone bother to create a code that couldn’t mean different things for different people? You can’t put a price in the QR code – because prices change. You can’t put product recall data into the QR code – because product recalls happen AFTER printing of product packaging. Of course you CAN insert a URL into a QR code and direct a user to a webpage – but you can do the same with a one-dimensional code and almost 100% of products ALREADY have a 1D code. So why are QR codes big in Japan? I think the primary reason is that they can contain 1,817 Japanese characters (Kanji/Kana). Almost ALL mobile phones in Japan have the capability of reading QR codes. NTT Docomo established the de facto standard for encoding URLs and contact information – all using Kanji/Kana.

When manufacturers begin to mark their products using QR codes, we will include them in our system. At the moment, “manufacturers 0” create QR codes for use in chains of retail supplies, that is, as for 1D codes. As soon as they make ShopSavvy, you will allow you to scan 1D or 2D -code (that is, EAN/QR), the obtained information about the product, including: price, availability, size, weight, ingredients, social impact and environmental impact. To find out more, read GS1′s Mobile Barcodes Position Paper.