If QR Codes are considered the most common of mobile barcode formats, you wouldn’t necessarily know it by how many times users scan them.
Truth is, the mobile technology has not fulfilled its promise to connect with large audiences, according to eMarketer’s “QR Codes: Marketers Keep Hitting Go, but Consumer Adoption Still Slow” report. As it turns out, consumers and marketers are on a different page altogether. Consumers want deals and discounts, while marketers want to provide information.
In fact, a September survey by the Association of Strategic Marketing of U.S. marketers who used QR Codes found that two thirds of the codes delivered product information, while less than one-quarter offered discounts.
The theory supports a recent study by international mobile payments and marketing company Mobio that showed 60 percent of North American consumers only scanned QR codes once. But some good news is out there. eMarketer forecasts that U.S. adult smartphone penetration will grow from 43.9 percent in 2011 to 58.3 percent by 2014. It also projects that the percentage of smartphone users who will have scanned a mobile barcode will go from 25 percent to 27 percent during that timeframe.
Reprinted with permission from Connect Magazine.
