There are a lot of interesting applications in the Android Market and App Store. And many companies use these applications for intriguing mobile users. Scan Search is one of the famous applications in Korea.
This application provides a AR(Augmented Reality) based local information and a barcode scanning function. The interesting point is that the application is used byE-Mart, a subsidiary of Shinsegae Co. Shinsegae is the biggest distributor in Korea, which operates a department and a major supermarket chain in nationwide. You just need to scan the barcode of a product that you are interested on, and you can get information such as the selling place, the price and other people’s comments. And E-Mart provides this service so that customers can buy the items through the simple scanning. As I remarked on the previous article ‘Q store’, smartphones are changing people’s shopping patterns. Especially offline shopping patterns are expanding to a mobile shopping channel like the e-Commerce.
It’s too early to decide what would be the next step for the commerce industry. But one thing that many experts are sure of is that people are rapidly accepting thisnew life-style under this always-on service environment. From WiFi to NFC, PAN is becoming a good alternative for a mobile service.
