Back in May, I blogged about Scanbuy and their mobile price comparison tool.
Well, according to Engadget, it’s now launched for a range of 16 phones including the Treo 600, Nokia 6600, 6620, 7650, 3650, and 7610, and Sony Ericsson P800, P900, and P910.
ScanZOOM is a software app for camera phones that letÌs you compare prices in a shop with what it costs online, by snapping a picture of a productÌs barcode and then showing price information from PriceGrabber and Amazon.
This could be seriously bad news for a retailer – how long will it be before some idjit tries to ban camera phones in their stores?
But retailers don’t need to shut up shop just yet. There is more to purchasing than pure price. If I’m browsing in a book shop, am I going to worry about saving 50 cents for the convenience of taking it home with me now, from a trusted brand/source? Some will, of course, but I don’t think everyone, by any means.
I remember a while back doing some consulting for a couple of related businesses. The offline version offered to audit companies’ non-core purchasing requirements – stuff like stationery and lift maintenance contracts (a real area of rip-off by the way). They did this completely free and earned their money based on a percentage of money saved.
For a business, this is surely a no-brainer. No upfront cost, no risk and almost certainly they’d save money.
But the sales process was damn difficult. In fact, it was among the toughest I’ve ever seen, despite the lack of real competition.
Their online business was a free website where ordinary people could do much the same thing. They’d show you the best way of buying your utilities (gas, electric, phone) and they’d change them all very easily with a few clicks.
I saved 30% off my annual spend in about 5 minutes.
Again, people just didn’t seem to be motivated to do this, despite much positive press coverage and a similar risk-free message.
Naturally, some companies took up the audit and some people changed their utilities. But the vast majority didn’t. It seems that saving money isn’t necessarily a great motivator.
ScanZONE also have a real issue with customer recruitment and retention – or our old friend, marketing. You have to:
1. Tell people about it.
2. Get them to download it onto their phones.
3. Teach them to use it.
4. Remind them to use it, or hope they remember to use it when they’re shopping AND they want a price comparison.
5. Hope they remember how to use it, at that point.
6. (Presumably) pay to use it.
This is all an awful lot harder than it might sound, no matter how cool your application is.
The last point (about paying) is also very significant. People who are very price sensitive about saving money are also going to be very price sensitive about how they go about doing this. In other words, they’ll be the least likely people to pay to use such an application.
Finally (as retailers everywhere start to breathe more easily) for this sort of service to really work, it has to save dollars not cents – every time you use it. By the time you’d paid to make the comparison, it’s only going to be worth using if you’ve saved a significant slug of dosh. And if you use it and it doesn’t save you money, you have to be sure it’s going to save you even more next time to absorb the cost of 2 comparisons, rather than just 1.
So, while I’m enthusiastic about bar code/scanning technology in all kinds of scenarios, price comparison engines may not work, as counter-intuitive as this might seem.
Russell
PS Image from Rush Tracking Systems.
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