By now you have seen and read several blogs regarding QR codes. Well, add us to the list, but give us a minute to explain why we are writing about it and how it can help your company.
First, a quick refresher on QR (quick response) codes and the creative and unique ways they are being used. These have been around since the mid-90s, but just started to gain mainstream use in the past few years as smart phones have grown in popularity. QR codes are used when you download a QR reader app on your smart phone. Open the app and to grab the QR image that will take you to a destination like Facebook, a video, a sign up page or something of interest. Here are some of the many ways they have been used in the retail and non-retail environments:
- - The Home Depot has started to use them in their weekly circulars - link
- - Best Buy uses them in store to give more information about products – link
- - Companies use them on their products to help build customer fan bases on Facebook – link
- - Realtors use them to get info to potential home buyers – link
- - They are also being used on grave markers – link
There are even more possibilities out there. But what does QR codes have to do with eSENSE Retail and retail data analytics. We at eSENSE now have QR data analytics as part of its suite of solutions. We can GENERATE unique QR codes that can be READ by any smart phone and then we can ANALYZE the QR code data.
We recently did this with a company that did a promo for The Home Depot. They added QR codes to their quarter pallet display and to their product labels. By doing this they were able to tell customers more about their product, which will most likely lead to future sales. They were also able to analyze customer habits by learning that more codes were scanned from the in-store floor display than the product label.
Here at eSENSE we always say that retail is detail and with the addition of QR code analytics companies can now gain an additional level of insight about its products, customers and sales.
Thanks for reading,
eSENSE Retail team
Don’t forget to download our QR Code Reader app that is available for free in the iTunes App Store.

