Quick response codes have been quite fashionable since their origin in Tokyo, Japan. The several purposes they can be used for has created a new wave in the way things can be advertised and sold. Hence it would be a relevant question to ask why some QR codes are more worthy of a scan than others.
Survey on QR codes by Lab 42:
Some time ago, Lab 42 conducted a market survey to find the answer to the same question which revealed some shocking results. Our notions of how popular the QR codes are actually all wrong; though, there is still a bit of doubt about the accuracy of these results.
Lab42 is a market research company, based in Chicago. In the year 2011, the company conducted a survey on QR codes, its most popular uses and the reasons for certain QR codes being scanned and why others were ignored. The survey was conducted amongst five hundred Americans who were over the age of thirteen. The investigation was conducted through online social networks during one month (from July to August that year).
Results of the survey:
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According to this survey, more than fifty percent of people had not had any sort of interaction with these two dimensional bar codes.
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From this list of surveyed people, forty three percent did not even know what the QR code was; twenty six percent did not have a smart phone in the first place, while fifteen percent found them inconvenient.
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Quite astonishingly a few of them didn’t even know how to scan a QR code.
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With so many people unaware about the existence of such multi dimensional codes, technology is slowly playing the part of a true master in terms of advertising and marketing.
Motive behind scanning of QR codes:
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The main motive for scanning these QR codes was the discounts that were made possible through them.
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Quite interestingly forty three percent did it out of curiosity, and around 30 percent scanned the QR codes because they liked the ad which supported the QR code.
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When people were asked if they ever used the QR codes for things like booking a ticket, forty two percent said yes and most of the bookings they had done were for music concerts, followed by flights, buses and trains (respectively).
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Upon being questioned whether or not any of them had every tried making their own QR code, twenty seven percent of the people who had been familiar with the code said yes.
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Users, according to the survey, do believe that the QR code makes an advertisement more interesting.
In an information laden world, it provides ready and quick information with just one single scan. In the age of Google, where information is power, this invention is quite handy and perhaps still does have a future. However, if it is true that the QR code is not as popular as we thought it is or would be, then advertisers would really need to rework their strategies either to curb them, or to really make them more accessible. On the other hand, the code is still young so there are still endless possibilities.
