QR—Connecting Offline and Online Life

Four years ago, when I was still an undergraduate student, the most excited activity I remembered was provided by Chinamobile. We could use the credit in our accounts to exchange McDonald’s meal combos. I used 1500 M credit (one RMB input to account = one M credit) and get a text saying I can show this text to any McDonald’s in Beijing and get one specified meal combo. I brought this text and give my Nokia (Symbian) to counter, and he just scanned my phone by a small black machine while passing my meal. It took me less than 2 mins from stepping into Mc to leaving, counting into waiting in line, and I didn’t even need to order. At that time, the only sentence in my mind was: Holy! How magic technology is!

Four years past, right now, I not only knew what the magic text contained, but also learned international name for that magic—Quick Response. The article I read gave us a lot of statistics showing that QR is becoming a fast growing tool for marketing. And it also provided us who and how provide and receive information form QR. The question I generated at first was that why home usage is higher than outdoors. As my understanding for QR, it’s a convenient method for customers to get more information while shopping, or being used as a ticket or coupon, just as what I did in Mc. That says, usage at outside or stores supposed to be higher. However, when I saw that almost 50% scanned QR were from newspaper or magazines, I began to understand. People are more likely get discount or product information from reading mails, newspapers, magazines, etc., or surfing on PC, all of which are more possible down at office or home.  

Since half of scanned happened at home or office where has PC. I’m wondering why they can’t just set a scanner into PC. When I needed to read some product information at home or near a PC, I preferred to read them on PC because when I found some interesting factors of that product, I can buy it by simply clicking the link driving me to online store.

QR (or something similar) must be the bridge between on line and off line in the future. Whatever people saw off line, like news on newspaper, can simply find it online by simply scanning. Every product people use off line can be found related information and use reviews online by simply scanning. Every business card can be store into your online account by simply scanning the QR on it. What QR can bring to us is far more than what does right now. The only problem is that customers can’t scan easily, or in other words, the amount of devices which can scan is too limited. Maybe in the future, every mobile should contain the QR scan program and all PCs also should have PC scanner. While QR market become mature, marketers can get customer’s location and buying behavior through QR data management, and then make specific marketing plan to each customer. At that time, however, customer privacy is another problem.