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Monday, July 02, 2012

IBM Tests Augmented Reality Shopping App

In Adage:  Have not seen IBM involved on the shelves of retail for a while.  This is an interesting effort of theirs in testing the experience of in-store interaction.  We worked with their early use of kiosk and checkout experience.   " .... Marketers have tried targeting consumers in stores with QR codes and barcode scanners that so far have gotten limited traction. Now IBM is testing a new approach, dubbed augmented reality, which is a bit like applying search or a personalized version of Google Goggles to the world of physical store shelves.

The prototype app, being tested with some yet-unnamed large retailers in the U.S., can be downloaded by shoppers in-store at the onset of a shopping trip or beforehand to their smartphones or tablets. It lets them describe what they're looking for in terms of ingredients they want more of (e.g. whole grains) or less or none of (e.g. gluten or lactose). It also lets them input that they want biodegradable packaging or say what ingredients or products they want to assemble for a meal.... " 

1 comment:

kj said...

An interesting concept. What I wonder is how it will be adopted by users. The issue I see is that you have to film a large amount of the store aisle to get the information. Will users want to walk up and down aisles scanning them in hopes of finding the ingredients they need? Will users scan certain sections looking for things that match what they know they are already looking for and this will help them make choices between different brands of a certain product? Hopefully there will be follow up articles on this app that follow what happens in the in-store trials.