Omnichannel

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

Junior retailer Mandee is using mobile barcodes to engage consumers and have them participate in its ongoing campaign. The company partnered with junior denim brand Vanilla Star Jeans for the mobile initiative. Both companies are rolling out a design challenge for students at New York City’s High School of Fashion Industries.

Mia Sara, a Manhattan transplant in Los Angeles, misses window shopping in New York, but has found a replacement — shopping on her iPad.

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.

Apple is moving forward on plans to put iPads to work in its retail stores, not just as display models, but as tools to sell its other products. In Australia and other countries, Apple stores have opened with a new setup that makes use of iPads as informational tools to customers around the store, taking the place of the paper-based informational signs next to the company's products.

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 comScore found that 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based check-in services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the mobile population. 

Recently Google announced the launch of +1 (yes, plus one, a name even more unfortunate than iPad), its version of the Facebook "Like" button. Google says +1 is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out," and that it's designed to help you "share recommendations with the world — right in Google's search results."

Recognized for its durable and high-quality products designed for working men and women, Carhartt has over a century's worth of trust built up with its customers. The cross-channel re-
tailer has built that trust not only through its quality products, but also by engaging consumers on multiple levels: as a B-to-B/B-to-C hybrid brand; a wholesale supplier to thousands of brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country; and a direct retailer via catalogs and an e-commerce site. Carhartt believes company-owned retail stores is its next big opportunity.

J Vineyards & Winery has incorporated mobile barcodes onto its labels to educate consumers on the particular wine bottle they scan. The company decided to use mobile barcodes because of the growing number of smartphones in the market and to further engage its ever-changing tech-savvy consumers.