An evaluation of product identification techniques for mobile phones

Abstract

Among others, consumer products can be purchased in the Internet and in traditional stores. Each of the two has dedicated advantages. An online survey conducted within the frames of this work investigates these advantages. It motivates the transition of the advantages of online shopping, such as access to recommendations of other consumers, to the sales floor. Recent trends in mobile phone technology, for example the emergence of the mobile Internet, enable exactly this transition, potentially enriching the shopping experience in the real world. A key challenge though is a fast and convenient identification of products. This work compares five product identification modalities for mobile phones in a comparative study. The dependent variables evaluated are 'task completion time' and 'perceived ease of use'. Our study is the first that quantifies the advantage of automatic identification. The results indicate that automatically identifying a product scanning a tag can be up to eight times faster than entering a product name in a text field. Surprisingly, barcode recognition using a camera phone can be conducted almost as fast and convenient as scanning an RFID tag. Our work provides a benchmark for developers having to choose appropriate identification technology for their mobile application. © 2009 Springer.