Nov
19
Scanning Coke or Water? Why?
When we first released ShopSavvy on Android we had lots of users complain that when they scanned the barcode on their Snickers Bar or Diet Coke they didn’t get a result. Our answer? Why are you scanning Snickers and Coke? The answer was fairly straightforward – scanning is fun. At the end of the day ShopSavvy was designed as a FREE application to enable a user to scan the barcode of high value items that tend to be sold at very different prices in a local area and online. What are we good at?
- Books, DVDs and Video Games (represent 25% of our scans)
- Consumer electronics (represent 50% of our scans)
- Soft goods, groceries, health and beauty items ((25% of our scans)
Why do we ’suck’ at groceries? First, it is difficult to get grocery stores to share pricing and inventory data. Primarily because most grocery retailers don’t have the technology to support a live feed, but also because they are concerned about price transparency (go into a major chain and look at pricing for milk and eggs in urban areas and compare it suburban areas, you will be surprised). The second reason we ’suck’ is simply because barcodes on food items are HARD to read. They are often on flexible plastic packages or curved bottles and our current version struggles scanning these items.
The WORST thing is that most people try out ShopSavvy by scanning a bottle of water or a candy bar. If that is all you try you miss out on the real power of ShopSavvy. Being able to determine online and local price and inventory for millions of items from thousands of retailers is what is great about ShopSavvy. Of course, despite this post (and others like it) users will judge us on food items and as a result we are working on a) improving our coverage of groceries and b) improving our ability to scan hard to reach barcodes.
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Pingback by Today’s Startup and Entrepreneurial Updates | CenterNetworks — November 19, 2009 @ 7:02 am
Very cool application! Groceries should be a major part of Shop Savvy. All consumers buy groceries and spend thousands of dollars on them every year. Being able to compare prices between Safeway, Giant, Harris Teeter and Wegmans is VERY useful. You should add the ability for users to report and share pricing data from their local store rather than depending on grocers to provide it for you. You should also add a way for users save the price in their device for comparison later.
Comment by Eric Steenstra — November 30, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
Planning a user generated data feature – a little harder than it looks due to the fact that users hold us responsible for the results we publish. We need to be able to mark it as user generated. Also, thinking about how to time out the data is important. Anyway, we are working on it. Thanks for the comment.
Comment by amuse — November 30, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
This app was recommended to me, I was told that it was the best app EVER… I agree it’s really cool, but it really isn’t all that useful to me the way it is currently designed. I was hoping to use it to compare prices of the higher priced items that I buy on a regular basis (toiletries, laundry products, household cleaners, OTC medications, etc). But when I scan the products that I use, it only brings up 1 maybe up to 3 local locations, and rarely are the locations anywhere that I’m going to be shopping (Target, Wal-Mart, Kroger). I understand the issue of the stores not reporting the prices, but it would be nice it the users could report the prices that they find. If I’m looking for my laundry detergent, I would like to know which of my local stores might have it on sale that week. Using this app for shopping for electronics is an ok use, but honestly, if I’m looking to buy electronics, I’m not out in the stores where I can scan bar codes, I’m going to sit at home and compare prices on the internet.
Comment by Shelly — December 12, 2009 @ 9:52 am
Shelly, the hardest thing to provide local prices on are groceries. Why? The retailers won’t provide them to us. On the other hand retailers who sell consumer electronics, books, DVDs, video games are happy to provide us inventory and pricing data. These items tend to be much higher cost than groceries and offer a better chance for ShopSavvy to help you save.
We are adding features like coupons, rebates, health/safety information that might make scanning groceries more interesting, but I am afraid there is nothing we can do about groceries.
Comment by amuse — December 12, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
[...] apps do, so I guess you missed the part that specifically says to not try to scan everyday stuff. Big in Japan | Scanning Coke or Water? Why? Maybe you should read up on how to remove apps from your phone and get rid of these crappy [...]
Pingback by Barcode scanning a joke - Page 2 - Android Forums — January 15, 2010 @ 2:22 am
Why not create an option / separate app for identifying items, but not searching price.. Would be a reasonable solution for grocery items. I just want to be able to build a database of items I regularly buy. Just have the items identified then saved to a list that can be exported, or something
Comment by Mary — January 29, 2010 @ 11:33 pm
Working on it.
Comment by amuse — January 30, 2010 @ 9:23 am