GS1 MobileCom / B2C

In the past, the main source of product information has always been the brand owner. Brand owners were able to deliver their brand messages to consumers through leveraging advertising, media agencies and retailers. But, in today’s landscape a world of the Internet, mobile phones and on-line social media, changes are happening and will continue to happen that brand owners are no longer in full control of the information and messaging that consumers rely on. Today and in the future, there will be many other sources of data for consumers, particularly online social media, over which brand owners have limited or no control. When consumers receive bad data through these new sources, it represents, at best, a missed opportunity for brand owners to accurately inform consumers about products. At its worst, it is a direct assault on the integrity of their brands and damages consumer trust, which may be hard if not impossible to regain. Consumers will continue to seek information about a product from many different sources. Consumer need to know and trust data that comes from a reliable source they believe is coming directly from brands. Accurate brand owner data will also ensure that peer-provided content is based on fact, and helps prevent false impressions from being propagated through consumer and social networking channel.

With over four billion users in the world, mobile phones are becoming an important channel for businesses and consumers to interact. Today mobile phones can "speak" to bar codes, read Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and access the internet. By pointing and clicking a product, mobile phones can bring information and services linked to a product closer to the consumer and the consumer closer to the brand. Brand owners and retailers rightly recognize that there are many ways to use mobile phones to offer consumers a richer shopping experience and more engaging services.

This potential cannot currently be fully realized because the mobile ecosystem is not fully interoperable, and mobile services are not compatible across all mobile devices and operators – so it is costly and complex to launch scalable global services. Global standards and an open and neutral infrastructure, trusted by both businesses and consumers, must be found.

That’s where GS1 comes in. GS1 standards are used by over 1 million companies in more than 150 countries. These companies are working with GS1 to ensure they can leverage existing standards to develop innovative services to make consumers’ lives better.

By working on industry engagement and standards development at global level and implementation at local level, GS1 is helping these companies create and deploy mobile applications and services that are interoperable, scalable and cost-effective.

There are two key focus areas for the use of GS1 standards:

ensuring products are identified by GS1 standards
enabling access to trusted product information and related services

When this current work in done, the envisioned generic scene should as follows:

Six business applications have been identified as particularly relevant in the supply and demand chain.

Extended packaging: consumers access additional information about products through their mobile phone.
Content purchase and delivery: digital products such as videos, games and music can be trialled and sold via mobile phones.
Mobile coupons: mobile phones are used both to capture and redeem coupons and discounts.
Authentication: mobile phones are used to check whether or not a product is genuine.
Re-ordering: Mobile phones are used to reorder products with orders sent to the supplier in a standard format.
Mobile self-scanning: consumers in supermarkets use their mobile phone (rather than a device supplied by the supermarket) to scan products as they do their shopping.

Of these six extended packaging is one of the applications of Mobile Commerce that has been identified as relevant for the Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) supply and demand chains in the GS1 Mobile Commerce white paper (GS1 MobileCom). Extended packaging means giving consumers access to additional information or services about products through their mobile phone. It is the ability to retrieve additional information about the product through mobile devices or in general to link a product with virtual information or services. Some examples are nutritional and allergen information, language translators, recipes and usage instructions. Consumer needs are better met in this way since it is not feasible to print everything a consumer might want to know on a product’s packaging or a store shelf.

The possibilities of an Extended Packaging solution have no limits. It provides a solution to consumer information needs,