Mobile devices can deliver interactive food in the grocery

An international research company called Latitude (nothing to do with Google Latitude) has released results from a study into how mobile technologies can affect the way people buy food. The results suggest that on-the-spot, interactive information in shops is something consumers really want – and mobiles can provide.

What’s the story?

The research here is a bit more holistic than usual – rather than a codified set of questions, Latitude got 93 different people to tell them a “narrative” about when and how they wanted information while shopping. Based on the info gleaned from these interviews, Latitude has declared that the future of food is interactive.

What do consumers want?

On-the-spot information: people rarely research their food before they hit the aisles. But when you’ve got a bag of apples in your hand, you can easily wonder where they came from. Latitude reports that 56% of participants said they would like information about the food they’re buying, including it’s origin, health effects, ingredients, etc. and 31% wanted “in-store” information, like the location and price of the product they’re looking for. According to the study, consumers want this information to be offered easily and digitally.

Mobile solutions: seemingly without promotion, over 30% of respondents suggested mobile was the best way to access on-the-spot data – even those who didn’t own a smartphone.

Barcodes: 16% of the respondents suggested that mobile barcodes could be used for the purpose, as well as RFID tags.

To see the full study, download from Latitude

What we think?

Some of the solutions suggested by the interviewees for this study were pretty imaginative. One suggested an augmented reality app that would recognize an item your were looking at, and provide automatic price comparisons for nearby stores. Another suggested a recipe suggester that would suggest meals you could make based on the ingredients at your disposal.

For a study like this, a lot depends on when and where it was performed. But the results suggest that the people interviewed were aware of the functions of their phone, and would love to see those functions being applied imaginatively to their shopping.