Scandit, developer of software-based barcode scanning solutions for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices, has announced that consumers scanned more than 4.5 million barcodes with Scandit-powered mobile shopping apps this Black Friday. Mobile shopping apps that utilise Scandit technology experienced a significant increase in mobile barcode scanning this year, with some US-based apps experiencing as much as a 40x increase over last year, while total scan volume among mobile apps that utilise Scandit more than doubled year-over-year.
Mobile applications with in-app barcode scanning empower consumers in entirely new ways, enabling them to avoid long checkout lines through smartphone-based self-checkout, capture and save product information, compare prices in real-time, submit or view user reviews, build and share lists, find items while in-store, and more. 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.
An October 2014 survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Dynatrace found that among U.S. owners of smartphones and tablets, 37 percent favour 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 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," said Samuel Muller, CEO of Scandit. "Retailers now recognise 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."
Building on the success of its software-based barcode scanner-used on more than 50 million mobile devices worldwide-Scandit recently launched the Mobile App Suite for Retail, which integrates enterprise-grade scanning with customisable applications and back-end services for a variety of use cases including self-checkout, mobile point-of-sale (mPOS), clienteling, mobile shopping, shopping lists and procurement.
"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," Mueller concluded.
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