Telecom Lead India: Technology major IBM has unveiled a new retail
technology targeting enterprise customers.
The new mobile technology enables consumers to scan items
into a mobile phone as they shop the aisles, and check themselves out at an IBM
self-checkout station.
The IBM Mobile Shopper application incorporates Honeywell mobile
scanning technology that scans any bar code.
The new solution is designed to help retailers provide a customized
in-store shopping experience for smart phone shoppers.
The solution currently runs on the Google Android and Apple
iOS operating systems, is highly reliable and offers sub-second response time.
A recent IBM Institute of Business Value study said self
checkout is the preferred way to shop for most consumers today, and they are
very specific about the way they want to use mobile technology while shopping.
More than 50 percent say they want to use a mobile device to
scan while shopping, and to do final checkout at a self-checkout station. More
than 40 percent want to scan samples and retrieve shopping items for pickup, or
have the items delivered directly to their homes.
“Retailers can now deliver a more personalized shopping
experience that is less of a chore and more of a convenience for consumers. By
enabling consumers to scan and check-out a wide variety of products at their
own pace, retailers can not only create a more customized shopping environment,
but also increase in-store traffic,” said John Gaydac, vice president, IBM
Retail Store Solutions.
The new mobile phone application is powered by IBM ACE
software, Store Integrator software, and the newest release of IBM
Self-Checkout software, which provides shoppers the same access to digital
coupons, loyalty programs and special promotions at self-checkout stations that
is traditionally available at fully-staffed point-of-sale checkout lanes.
“Honeywell has a long heritage of providing bar code
scanning for mission-critical applications where inaccuracy is not an option,”
said John Waldron, president of Honeywell Scanning & Mobility.
Honeywell said its SwiftDecoder Mobile bar code decoding
software has helped secure the company’s leadership in camera-based bar
code decoding. Among them is the practice of decoding bar code-related information
from a real-time video image, such as the display of a smart phone or other
mobile device.
