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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’.
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