Amazing Japanese Mobile Marketers

Japan always surprised me of their sophistication and development in technology and retail industry, even though I couldn't enjoy much during my short trip there. Believe it or not, while the US retail giant, such as Walmart, just started to deploy mobile to entice consumers, their Japanese peers have used this tool for the better part of a decade!! What is the key here? The bar code.




I'm not sure whether any of us tried it before, at least I didn't. Basically, you just use your smart phone to take a photo of or use specialized bar code reader application for your mobile. Then you can make your online purchase or access to information, multimedia content, promotional opportunities, retail store locations, discounts and samples from brand marketing materials. Of course, you can also email it to your friends/family via your mobile instead of logging on facebook to tell them what you like or you don't like. As consumers, we may face some problems or difficulties in using it. This is because bar code is developed under different standards so sometimes we need to download different mobile applications, which are somehow annoying.

For retailers, instead of the amazing marketing potentials they can explore using the mobile bar code, they may want to learn lessons from Japanese practitioners. According to a FT article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34bf67e2-61d4-11df-998c-00144feab49a.html,the QR bar codes now being introduced in the US and Europe were originally invented by the Toyota supplier Denso to track car parts. They are now on advertisements and fliers and 76 per cent of Japanese consumers have scanned one with their phone, according to the market researcher Netasia. HOWEVER, only 0.8 per cent of consumers use them to access items for purchase. Instead, consumers mostly scan bar codes to download product coupons to the payment chip that is built into every Japanese mobile phone, which is seldom seen here in US. At Japanese McDonald’s, for example, consumers can download a coupon on to their mobile phone and then wave the phone over a reader at the till to receive a discounted price. In contrast, the mobile digital coupons now being used in the US generate bar codes on the phone’s screen, which need to be scanned at checkout.

Is there any student from Japan who want to share his/her shopping experience?