Point-and-Shoot Shopping
By Kate Betts
The humble bar code is getting hip. And with it, a luxury brand hopes to usher in a revolution in U.S. retailing. Later this month, in a campaign pegged to tennis' U.S. Open, Ralph Lauren will start helping American consumers use their camera phones to experience Japanese-style point-and-shoot shopping.
To promote mobile commerce in the U.S., Lauren is putting a newfangled bar code called a QR code--short for "quick response"--in his company's store windows and on its advertisements and catalogs. QR codes were created in 1994 to track auto parts during manufacturing since the codes can carry large amounts of quickly scannable data. Today in Japan, millions of mobile-phone users swipe their handsets over codes on billboards and magazine pages to link to websites with additional information and, of course, to shop. In Europe, a company called BlueCasting offers a Bluetooth-based system to download video clips and music from codes printed on otherwise ordinary-looking posters.
Lauren discovered the technology on a trip to Tokyo, where his design team observed shoppers using their handsets to scan and buy items. In the U.S., all consumers need to get started is a phone that can take pictures and surf the Web. After texting rlqr to 65056, they'll receive a reader that can scan QR codes. In addition to merchandise, shoppers can use their handsets to access articles, videos and sports scores on the Ralph Lauren site. "These days fashion has to be integrated with technology," says David Lauren, advertising chief for Polo Ralph Lauren. "This is just one more way we can do that." It's also one more way consumers can shop until they drop--or their cell-phone signal does.