Skip to main content

Scan before purchase | Become a Smart Consumer





With newer products being launched every year, consumers have a wider range of products to choose from. This wide accessibility is also attributed to various new players in e-tailing offering services in remotest corners of the country.

But despite all this, the retail scene looks grim. Consumer confidence in products is diminishing than ever before and with more awareness, consumers have started asking for product authentication as proof to rely on product claims.

Barcodes play an integral role in establishing product identity and verifying product claims. These black and white bars on the product label, which up till now considered just a convenience at the point of sale counters, have started gaining more and more importance to get product details from consumers’ perspective.

Besides being used in several B2B operations, today barcodes are being considered by consumers as a gateway to truth. This is possible with the advent of various mobile scanning applications, which enable consumers to get more information on products and sometimes, verify the claims made on the product label.

The premise of most of these applications is to provide complete and accurate product information to enable shoppers to make the right purchase decisions since insufficient/illegible information on the product label, at times, causes hindrance.

To address this issue, GS1 India has introduced one trusted mobile application Smart Consumer app, which was launched in December 2016, with an objective of empowering consumers with reliable product information. This is particularly important since most of the scanning applications bank on crowd-sourced product data, which, at times, is incorrect and misleads consumers. In sharp contrast, data populated on the Smart Consumer app is sourced directly from brand owners of products.

A simple scan of the barcode, starting with ‘890’, using the Smart Consumer mobile app, enables consumers to find product information, such as brand name, ingredients, product image, MRP, net content, dimensions, Regulatory information like ISI/ BEE/ FSSAI license information and its validity, etc.

Through Smart Consumer mobile app, consumers can also share product feedback directly with the manufacturers and also file complaints against manufacturers or brand owners. Consumers can also use this app to verify product barcodes given on the label and to connect with brands.

So, what are you waiting for? Download the Smart Consumer app from your Google play store or Apple Store, and start scanning barcodes starting with ‘890’.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DataKart: National Repository of Information on Indian Retailed Products

 Reaching out to customers with accurate product information has never been more competitive and difficult for retailers than today. This is majorly because of the ever increasing complexity of business processes with ever increasing consumer demands of more and more product information. As we move from single-channel retailing to multi-channel retailing, the need for better and efficient product data management has become critical. Listing new products as soon they are launched in the market is critical to ensure that they consumers don’t go back without making sales. This is directly proportional to a retailers/e-tailers’ ability to quickly receive and update information on new products from several suppliers and present it to retail shoppers as per the requirement of the retailing channel, ensuring seamless shopping experience.  However, in the real world scenario, most of this product information is compromised (and lost to some extent) in the process of receiving the sam...
Post a Comment
Read more

GS1 Traceability Service Enables Complete Track and trace of Their Products Across the Supply Chain

In today’s consumerist economy, the sale of a good or service is not merely a transaction – it is a brand promise that what is being sold to a consumer is genuine. The idea that a product isn’t what it's seller claims it to be is highly detrimental to consumer perception. The trust that is built gradually over time depletes instantly and damages the brand, delivering a possibly fatal blow to future sales. Long term sales, an important parameter of overall business success, is compromised when a consumer is given a product that is inauthentic, inferior, or unsafe. A brand’s social dimension, defined by the information shared by consumers online and through word-of-mouth, also takes a hit. With their aggressive focus on product data quality , today’s consumers are also acting as activists, taking action against brands that do not deliver on what they promise. Counterfeit products like medicines, faulty medical devices, contaminated foods and unreliable sourcing practices threate...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unique Identification Standards: Key to avoid Counterfeit

As per the Global Brand Counterfeiting Report 2018, total value of counterfeiting globally has reached to 1.2 Trillion USD in 2017 and is heading towards 1.82 Trillion USD by 2020 including counterfeiting of all equipment/products. For Indian market, where online retailing is expected to account for 3% of the retail market size by 2020, according to a report by PwC, counterfeiting provides a major challenge. The annual loss to counterfeiting in India amounts to 1 trillion per annum. Counterfeit products pose 3 major threats: Consumer safety :  Typically, authentic products goes through various high quality control processes during the manufacturing and processing and are governed by safety laws which companies have to abide by. Loss of revenue for brands and government:  Counterfeit products impact the market share for authentic business and also reduces the revenues for both businesses, in terms of sales revenues, and the Government, in terms of taxes and duties. Investment...
Post a Comment
Read more