How Mobile Will Change The Way We Shop

Last night, I found myself playing with a relatively new app I installed on my iPhone called RedLaser. I’m determined that apps like these will impact the way we shop. You ‘scan’ the barcode with RedLaser with the camera's phone and through local and online retailers it’s able to bring back a list of places selling the same product with all the prices, making it extremely easy to compare.



What does this mean for me and you?
The biggest advantage with this barcode scanning for consumers is the accuracy. You cannot go wrong with searching the product name or brand name because it's uniquely identified by a series of numbers or a Universal Price Code (UPC). Now, consumers have a walking scanner in their hands. Going down that path, apps like RedLaser enables us to bargain hunt much quicker and faster, making price comparison almost effortless. There's no more need to open a browser to search. There's no more need to type in the product you're trying to look up unless you want to type in the Universal Price Code (UPC) manually. Some people didn’t bother with comparing prices before but this might change, especially with the shift in consumer purchasing behaviour following the recent recession. (Check out this report by PwC about changing shopping behaviours.)

One of my favourite features of the app is that it helps you record down products you scan so you can spend more time looking it up later. For added convenience, you can also e-mail yourself the items you've scanned. Another favourite is its capability to search food items against allergens and returns a mini report. If you live in the US, a book scan will also tell you which library it's available at.

What a great app! I can only see it get better.

Website: http://www.redlaser.com/