Barcode Hero Brings Social Shopping to Brick and Mortar Stores
The meteoric rise of Amazon, eBay and other online retailing giants in the past decade may have sounded like a death knell for brick and mortar stores with their big boxes and physical inventories. But ironically, it seems that the supposed bane of in-the-flesh shopping–technology–just might be what brings it back into vogue among the spendiest, savviest sector of consumers in today’s digital age: mobile phone users.
It’s all about creating incentives for setting foot in a local business. In spite of the large subsection of shoppers who “research online and purchase offline,” the convenience, wider selection and competitive prices offered by online retailers give them an undeniable leg up when compared to buying items off the shelf. Because of this, many brick and mortar stores have been struggling to get buyers–or even window shoppers–through the door.
To that end, the latest generation of mobile apps and social gaming are actually helping the plight of offline businesses. Foursquare, Yelp and other location-based apps that reward users for “checking in” at various locations have made showing up at businesses fun again. Bragging rights as the duke or mayor of a certain location–not to mention the mobile exclusive coupons and discounts–provide plenty of incentive for even the most digitally inclined movers and shakers to spread buzz about where they’ve been. Coffee shops, restaurants and bars have seen the most success from Yelper traffic, but convenience stores, department stores and other retail shops also received modest visibility in location-aware apps as well.
Barcode Hero–a newcomer to the mobile social gaming arena–is taking it to the next level. Like Yelp and Foursquare, Barcode Hero allows users to become dukes and duchesses, rack up points and share their activities with their friends. But whereas other social gaming platforms are driven by “check ins”–that is, a user must be close to or inside the location–Barcode Hero rewards points and prestige when players scan the barcodes on product packages. And just like Yelpers can review restaurants and Foursquare users can add quick tips, Barcode Hero players can write reviews and make recommendations for products that they’ve scoped out or purchased. In fact, they’ll even earn points for recommending products to their friends.
For retailers, the benefit of games like Barcode Hero gaining critical mass is obvious. An app where the object of the game is getting physical products into the hands of discerning, relatively affluent (after all, these are smartphone owners) consumers is almost too good to be true, given that the first step towards buying a product off the shelf is picking it, turning it over and examining it closely.
But for marketers and app developers, Barcode Hero is also a goldmine. Whereas Facebook and Google have met their fair share of backlash for attempting to harvest user data and demographical information, the makers of Barcode Hero have a potential army of smart, savvy consumers who are working around the clock, compiling information about their shopping habits, their likes and dislikes and broadcasting it to voluntarily. It’s crowdsourced market research at it’s finest. And if they can convince us that it’s all in good fun, then all the better.
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Tags: iphone