Black Friday in the US saw an explosion of barcode scanning, with some retailer apps seeing a 40 times increase. According to scanning tech company Scandit, consumers scanned more than 4.5million barcodes on Black Friday alone with its solution.
The increase in mobile barcode scanning during the shopping experience points to a broader trend: consumers, especially consumers born after 1980, are using smartphones and tablets more than ever to make purchasing decisions, both online and offline, says the company.
An October 2014 survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Dynatrace found that among U.S. owners of smartphones and tables, 37 percent favor mobile shopping over in-store shopping, 56 percent plan to search or shop for gifts on their mobile devices this holiday season (up seven percentage points since last year) and a more than a quarter will make purchases on their mobile devices even while in-store. Highlighting the importance of a superior mobile shopping experience, the survey also found that 46 percent of mobile device owners will shop elsewhere if a mobile site or app fails to load in three seconds or less, up 9 percentage points from last year, and once they connect, 80 percent say they will abandon a mobile app or site if it is buggy, slow or prone to crashes, and shop elsewhere.
“Our findings and those from market research firms suggest that a majority of the time consumers spend making purchasing decisions is on mobile devices. Mobile commerce—or m-commerce—is a growing component of the modern shopping experience,” says Samuel Muller, CEO of Scandit. “Retailers now recognize the power of barcode scanning in the context of high performance, reliable native mobile applications. By providing an excellent m-commerce experience, retailers are better equipped to keep customers engaged, drive sales, and increase customer loyalty and retention.”
Muller concludes: “We expect the trend of mobile-enabled commerce to continue throughout the 2014 holiday shopping season and into 2015 and beyond, underscoring the need for retailers to provide consumers with an excellent mobile shopping experience, including the use of native applications featuring next-generation barcode technology.”
