Escalate Retail moves into mobile shopping with Microsoft mobile barcodes
Escalate Retail has launched its Buy Anywhere, Fulfill Anywhere service on mobile devices. The service places Microsoft Tag for retail products on magazines or billboards. Users can scan a tag, buy the product on their mobile, and go to the nearest store to pick it up.
From the release:
“Consumers today expect to be able to shop their favorite brands when, where, and how they choose, and retailers must be able to meet their expectations or risk losing customers,” said Stew Bloom, CEO, Escalate Retail. “Escalate is uniquely poised to deliver comprehensive ‘m-commerce’ capabilities, giving consumers the flexibility they demand and retailers the tools to follow through on every order. By facilitating m-commerce fueled by Microsoft Tag, we now can deliver true Buy Anywhere, Fulfill Anywhere Commerce™ capabilities to the shopper.”
What we think?
Ok, so one more tag reader shouldn’t make much of a splash. There’s a lot of movement in this area at the moment, but one thing about the Escalate service did catch my eye, and that’s the “Fulfill Anywhere” part. I love the idea. Imagine seeing an ad for a CD (for example) in your magazine. You snap it with your phone and buy it from the site. But instead of waiting for delivery, your phone tells you where the nearest retailer is and arranges for them to have it ready for pick-up. Not everyone will want to use that service, and it’s not much use if you live outside a city, but having the option there is great.
On the subject of Microsoft’s Tag - whilst I also agree with the positive comments above, there are two or three important factors to also consider:
Firstly, as GoMoNews has touched on before- whilst a ‘proprietary’ code is of course possible to read with specific readers this is a very limiting factor when requiring a global solution or ’standard.’
Second, not every piece of print is, or can be in colour, nor is a brand who doesn’t use 4 colour necessarily able to print it on their packaging/ads etc. - i.e. then it’s another limitation.
Third, I don’t believe for example that the Tag can be read on ‘any printed surface’ and is robust in many different conditions i.e. light - In other words anyone seeking to run a cross media campaign (which has to be anyone who does advertising and promotion) again cannot because of the Tag’s limitations.
Mark Hendriksen
http://www.upcode.com