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Producers keep underestimating the importance of delivering correct product information. In a transparent market, where customers armed with smartphones are becoming ever more powerful, such an attitude equals economic suicide.
Hundreds of millions of armed consumers eager for information
Before the end of this year, over half the population in many EU-countries and the US will have a smartphone, and their numbers will keep growing. Hundreds of millions of consumers use their smartphone to gather information, even at the moment of truth: in the supermarket.
Use of information retrieving apps grew 1600% in 2010
Up to 40 percent of smartphone owners have already downloaded an application to scan barcodes or QR-codes and retrieve product information while shopping. Recent research shows the use of this applications has risen by 1600 percent (!) last year. These applications are used while the customer is choosing which product to buy in the supermarket – the moment of truth for distributors – so it is of the utmost importance that this information is available and correct. So far, many producers have not understood the importance of this trend.
Only 9% of information complete and correct
In their recent report Beyond the label, ordered by information standardising company GS1, CapGemini discovered that only 9 percent of British groceries displayed correct information to smartphone apps. This means that 91 percent of the 375 products from this sample had either missing or incorrect information – a good reason for the customer not to buy those products. More specifically, 7 percent showed information that was wrong, 9 percent had only partial information available and an enormous 75 percent had no information at all.
Consumers take action against defective information
In this super-fast society, this leads to growing frustrations with customers who want easy access to reliable product information. Over 40 percent of respondents indicated they will not buy a product if there is no information available for smartphones or if this information is not reliable. On the other hand, one in three customers quickly removes applications that display unreliable information.
The complete survey can be found here.
