July 04 2006

PriceRunner announces price comparison by mobile phone: PriceFinder

In a joint venture with 118118.com (the directory services company PriceRunner will allow shoppers to get price comparison information on the move, in the retail showroom. In conjunction with barcode scanning by mobiles we're seeing web databases linked to mobile devices: bargains in the palms of our hands?

From today if you dial 118118 the directory enquiry assistants will be able to give you information from PriceRunner to allow you to compare the price of products. You're in a shop, it says the item's "on sale"... you can now ring to check whether it's cheaper elsewhere.

This will benefit both retailers with a physical presence (eg where there are branches of competing stores in the same mall, high street or out-of-town shopping centre). It will of course also benefit 118118 since all the while you're listening to the wisdom from PriceRunner you're also racking up call charges. Not that you'll mind where high-ticket items are concerns, but it could soon add up.

This supplements the growing use of mobile phones as scanning devices - able to resolve and interpret bar codes on products. This is result of both increases in camera resolution and improved data connections allowing real-time searches.

In Japan, for example, Amazon's "Scan Search" allows shoppers to 'photograph' a barcode and have the best price from Amazon.jp shown on their screens.

ScanBuy, a software company, allows mobile phones to interpret barcodes and their efforts have been attracting increasingly favourable comment and recognition.

It's clear that with mobile phone ubiquity, virtually free (marginal) costs of airtime and data connectivity, and software linking to price comparison and direct purchase retailers will need to spend some time thinking about the intentions of customers wandering their stores viewing everything via their cameraphone screens. I wonder whether we'll see 'guerilla barcode' marketing, with the barcode not matching the product description and price...?

Whatever the short term technical developments two things are clear: customer are price-sensitive and have access to this information at all times; and the need for current, live, price feeds is more important than ever.

Ian Jindal