ScanBuy at Home Depot

Do it yourself stores have a particular challenge, they often need to train shoppers in the use of many products that they might buy at a store for the first time.  Sometimes called 'extended packaging', the idea is to link a shopper to necessary information, specifications, sales-pitches, promotions and use videos that might be available.  We talked to Scanbuy about their 2-D barcode reading system several years ago. You can experiment with their Scanlife concept online.  They now support all kinds of barcode types.

 More shoppers understand the concept today and there are more smartphones out there.  Yet it still requires a level of 'training' to do the scanning.   It was an early implementation of reading barcodes from a smartphone.   Different than a location based system. The codes can be read at home in printed advertisements, online or at the store.  More about what Home Depot is doing in Mashable.  ScanBuy was impressive in attempting to address the problem of understanding shopper behavior.