Mobile Commerce

Home Depot partnered with Scanbuy, Inc. to launch an in-store service and ad campaign in which shoppers use their smartphones to scan quick response (QR) codes located on shelves, signage and advertisements.

Republic, a men’s and women’s multibranded fashion retailer, announced the launch of a mobile-optimized website that creates a rich and unique shopping experience for consumers whether they're at home, on the go or in a Republic store.

Carnaby, one of London's leading shopping destinations for fashion and lifestyle, has noticed a positive spike in visits to its website since releasing the new color branded QR Code. The hit rate to carnaby.co.uk increased by 258 percent when launched at the beginning of May 2011.

Consumers today are looking for a fun and easy shopping experience. Will technology like Google Wallet help with those goals?

With nearly 80 percent of its sales occurring at conventions across the country, Eagle Anime needed a POS solution that could connect its front-end sales with its back-end inventory management. The Japanese animation products retailer was using a client server POS and inventory management solution, but its inability to manage inventory in real time was hampering the growth of the company.

As consumers clamor to adopt emerging mobile technology, covering a constantly evolving line of smartphones and tablets, retailers are rushing to integrate mobile commerce into their sales and merchandising strategies.

As we reach the midpoint of 2011, it's clear that mobile has become a formidable marketing channel and will continue to blaze its trail into retail. Nielsen predicts that by the third quarter of 2011 smartphones will be the dominant mobile device in the U.S., overtaking feature phones. At some point we may stop referring to these handheld computers as phones and come up with a more accurate name that conveys the multidimensional communications and connectivity they provide.

Urban Outfitters, which has been piloting mobile point-of-sale devices in selected stores since late 2010, will distribute the technology across three of its brands this year, according to CEO Glen Senk. The chain's brick-and-mortar locations include 179 Urban Outfitters and 156 Anthropologie stores in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as 47 Free People stores.

With cafes on nearly every corner in Vancouver, British Columbia, Ethical Bean Coffee Co. needed a way to stand out. The answer was an odd barcode with a maze of black boxes instead of the usual straight lines.

A new study from the e-tailing group titled The Shopping Mindset of a Mobile Consumer found that the tablet's portability and ease of use explains why consumers see them as ideal tools for researching products and browsing followed by purchasing.