From short-lived QR codes to beacon technology and self-guiding apps, John Ryan explores why in-store tech can often do more harm than good.

Remember a few years ago when squares with squiggles in them started appearing in shop windows? The QR code had arrived and for a while retailers seemed to believe that we would all have a QR reader on our phone to decode these opaque ciphers. The theory went that in so doing we would be interacting with a store’s displays and this would make us want to head into a shop and inspect the offer further.

Suddenly there were no QR codes anywhere as retailers got wise to the fact that most shoppers just couldn’t be bothered. Then almost as suddenly as QR codes had vanished, it was the turn of the beacon. These, we were told, would enable information to be beamed to the smartphones of shoppers in or near a store in the hope they would, once again, reach for their wallets.

The jury is probably still out on this one, but you have to look pretty hard to find anybody executing a little dance of joy as beacon-based data appears on a phone when in a store, broadly because the technology can be a little flaky.

More harm than good

Now the new must-have is the in-store app. Visiting a large Carrefour store in Lille recently, a colleague downloaded an app, thoughtfully provided by the grocer, that generated a store diagram on a mobile phone on which the shopper appears as a red dot.

“A fair bit of supermarket shopping is about impulse buys and ‘self-treating’. The app overlooks this and a large portion of the hypermarket’s offer is missed”

John Ryan

As progress is made through the store, the dot keeps the viewer aware of their current location while giving directions to a low-margin ‘promo’ aisle. However, the final destination is a discount aisle and in making the journey towards it, guided by the app, scant attention had been paid to what is on offer along the way.

Something of an own-goal when you consider that a fair bit of supermarket shopping is about impulse buys and ‘self-treating’. The app overlooks this and a large portion of the hypermarket’s offer is missed. Once more, an example of a technology that may well be doing more harm than good.

Beware of in-store tech fads – they are, in large measure, the domain of snake-oil purveyors and, unless there is hard data demonstrating efficacy, you’d be wise to steer clear.

The Carrefour store in question, by the way, has an LED lighting system that can also be used for the purposes of in-store navigation. On the day of visiting it looked as if nobody was using it.