As always, it is a pesky problem for a discount fan to wait in a long queue at a retail outlet while checkout clerk apparently working painfully slow to make entry of barcodes in food coupons into the system. A typical red light scanner cannot read coupon’s barcodes in smartphone.
And, therefore up to now a shopper has to either take print of coupons he/she snagged from daily deal websites or other promotional discount distributors, download them on loyalty card, or stay calm till a receptionist finishes with entries at the time of redemption.
In an overwhelmingly large digital coupon market and claims like ‘everything goes mobile’ of coupon’s suppliers, the manual intervention slows down an acceleration of the retail industry besides smacking of contradiction.
According to an estimate, coupons account for $3.7 billion of consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry in North America wherein as more as 300 billion coupons are issued every year. This huge number reflects the enthusiasm of buyers for the daily deals or discount bearing vouchers that save them good money. Coupons had a saving value of $1.2 billion in 2010, according to Coupons.com.
This longstanding problem now has hit the solution as now Mobeam Inc. is converting into reality shared dreams of many that may all scanners read food coupons or any other digital coupons stored in smartphones.
The San Francisco-based mobile ecommerce solution provider has designed a mobile application that can turn a barcode in a handset into beam light readable to scanner at a points of sale. So, hot deals remain hot at the time of redemption.
Protector and Gamble (P&G), the world’s leading coupon distributor, has agreed to support the technology as a first adopter.
This technology that the designer said needs no change in hardware at retailer’s side is a right step towards propping up mobile social commerce and digitizing best deals from top to bottom.
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