(keitai-l) Re: Bar Codes to Mobile Phones (Alan Corp/Q-Phon)

From: Brett Shore <brettshore_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 02/08/01
Message-ID: <20010208101528.16811.qmail@web3101.mail.yahoo.com>
>there are a lot of articles about
>the use of coupons but not one mentions how they are redeemed. Do the
>cinemas/stores have to get special machines to read the coupons - 

Mary,

The way couponing works on keitai is that you show the screen to
someone and they give you the discount, that's it. 
If you see someone "scanning" your phone, try not to laugh, you're
supposed to think it actually works.

>how do they get their money from the company offering the coupon.

Take a standard barcode for example. The way it works is it's broken
into 3 numeric categories.

Family Group(manufacturer)
Product Group(which item)
Length of promotion

Scanning a barcode loads this information from the coupon into the
register.
The discount is tracked in the stores computer so the issuing company
knows how many items were sold at discount. 
If you take the typical supermarket model, all of the information is
electronically sorted then transferred back to the manufacturer over a
network.

If there isn't a paper coupon or you have the coupon on keitai then on
the register a special key is designated to ring up the discount.
Mondane but true.

cheers,
Brett

  
  


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Received on Thu Feb 8 12:07:35 2001