QR Codes

In today's technological world, retail companies are becoming increasingly more reliant on customer data. Companies are no longer just tracking your online shopping habits, but also tracking customer's in store habits. Some brick-and-mortar stores now have wireless receivers that can track your phone's Wi-Fi signal. They are starting to do this so that they can better market their products to their customers, so that they can reorganize their stores and change the layout in a manner that will make the customer buy other products not just the ones they wanted.

So how do QR codes fall into this picture? Simple if you haven't thought about it, companies tracking customer's every movement inside a store has privacy issues. When a company begins to do this in a brick and mortar store they have to send out a notice to all their customers. In that notice, there should be options on how to opt-out. One of those options will most likely be a QR code. QR codes are somewhat similar to bar codes in the sense that most generic QR codes are black and white. The major difference though is that QR codes can store a lot more data. A big use for QR codes is to store website information.

Have you used QR codes yet? How about to link it to your LinkedIn profile? I have and if you've taken CS 100W at SJSU you probably have too!

Here's my generic QR code.

Clifford, S., & Hardy, Q. (2013, July 14). Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking
Your Cell. The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2014, from 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0