“Good things come in small packages” or should that be rephrased to QR codes?
Bad jokes aside, QR codes are everywhere, and this little square box has received an incredible amount of attention — especially since the Coinbase Superbowl ad. At one point, QR codes could’ve been classified as an endangered species (at least in the western part of the world), but thankfully, they’ve made a full recovery and may even be considered an invasive one now. But there are still many things about QR codes’ past that have been neglected like: Where are they from? How did they get here? How did something that can be scanned an infinite number of times almost go extinct?
Brief History of the QR Code
In the 1990s, the manufacturing industry became more flexible and factories began producing a wide range of parts. To keep track of inventory, factories relied on barcodes, but a single barcode could only store 20 characters of information. If a box held multiple components, there were several barcodes placed on the box which meant employees spent an exorbitant amount of time scanning barcodes — up to 1,000 barcodes per day! Factories quickly recognized how inefficient this was and asked Denso Wave (a Toyota subsidiary) to create a better inventory management solution. Masahiro Hara, an engineer at Denso, was assigned to solve this problem. Hara realized he needed to develop a new code system that was more compact, could store more information (including Kanji and Kana characters), and could be read faster by scanners. After much trial and error, Hara and his two team members came up with a 2-dimensional code that could be scanned faster, store 200x more information, and store information horizontally and vertically.
COVID Accelerates the Adoption of the QR
QR codes struggled to be adopted by US consumers, but in other countries like China, QR codes were (and have been) thriving. QR codes never caught on in the US because people didn’t see a use case for them. Marketers were excited about QR codes but couldn’t figure out an effective way to actually change consumer behavior to a) recognize the value of QR codes and b) actually scan it. For that reason, many brands abandoned the QR code. Heinz Ketchup infamously left an out-of-date QR code on its ketchup that took users to a porn website versus their website. Since customers barely interacted with the QR code, Heinz forgot to renew the domain name the code was linked to, hence the porn website.
It took a pandemic to get Americans to fully embrace the QR code. The QR codes were seen as a way to minimize physical interactions that could lead to potential infection. Restaurants and bars began using QR codes to replace menus. Finally, people started connecting the dots and understanding the value of QR codes frictionless technology. QR codes have become the ultimate portal between the physical and digital world.
Boost’s QR Tags
Boost’s QR Tag was developed with a similar mindset as the original QR code, but Boost wanted to tailor its version to modern-day commerce, transactions, and shoppers.
The Boost QR Tag reduces friction in the buyer’s journey because it circumvents the needs for a website, adding products to a website’s cart, or re-entering payment info and shipping location across sellers’ websites, which means users can instantly checkout and purchase the item they want when intent is at its highest. The Boost QR Tag upgrades the customer’s journey to one swift moment — while they’re engaged with the seller’s content, product, chat channels, and other online and offline experiences — as opposed to the incumbent link-to-a-site method where there is increased risk of cart abandonment and a decreasing incentive to buy.
Every second the buyer spends trying to actually buy an item is a moment that doubt, frustration, and other purchase blockers can seep in and dissuade them from their purchase. The Boost QR Tag solves that.
Traditionally, sellers’ websites have been a sacred space to gather precious customer data and intel. The Boost Tag skips over the website, but doesn’t skip out on the customer data. Each QR Tag is embedded with attribution data so sellers can know exactly who their customer is, where they came from, and more, thus making QR Tags a perfect way to remove the need for discount codes that used to be required to track conversions from affiliate/influencer selling as well as print, audio, and out of home advertising.
Boost QR Tags can live anywhere in the digital world, physical world, and metaverse. The only limit to the Boost QR Tag is your creativity.
If you’re interested in discussing exciting and unique ways to leverage QR Tags drop us a line at accounts@boo.st
