Dec 3
Cameraphones, your weapon in the coming price-match wars
The people who make ShopSavvy, that bar-code scanning application for Google Android, got their first report of a user being chased out of a Target store for doing a price comparison before she bought an item. A call to the store later revealed no such policy existed:
I called the Target he visited (27300 Dequindre Rd. Warren, MI 586-573-4200) and talked to the store manager, Debbie, who indicated that she wasn’t aware of the policy. I asked her if she could check as I wanted to let our users know if they weren’t allowed to scan items in her store. She put me on hold for several minutes as she called her manager who indicated that whoever told Brandon he couldn’t use ShopSavvy was simply wrong.
ReadWriteWeb has a very thorough write-up of the situation, but I think they’ve got the nut when they say “Instant Price Match is Retail’s Future”.
Eventually, sure, but in the meantime will stores start installing cell phone jammers or ban picture-taking in stores claiming the privilege of private property? (Yes, some will.)
First ShopSavvy Ban Target [Biggu.com]
Image: M J M
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NeoMedia Technologies grandfathered this technology back in the mid 90’s and have been doing mobile code scanning and comparison shopping via UPC codes long before any other company in this space.
NeoMedia on ABC & NBC News circa 2004:
http://www.qode.com/videos/PaperClickOnAbc7.wmv
http://www.qode.com/videos/PaperClickOnNbc8.wmv
NeoMedia has a rich patent portfolio that covers scanning barcodes with a camera enabled mobile device to connect to the Internet, comparison shop, and/or retrieve online content.
http://www.neom.com/13.html