Lots of you ask, “Which retailers will price match?”  I found an interesting site that seems to answer this question for a number of retailers called Price Pinx.  Here are some of the retailers they follow:

Price Guarantee and Price Match Policies

[I first wrote about this on my blog and thought I would cross post here]

I was driving to Nacogodoches (network coverage is spotty at best on Highway 175) when I saw a Google alert for ShopSavvy (our barcode scanning price comparison application). One of my heroes, Tim O’Reilly, had written an article titled ‘Why Using ShopSavvy Might Not be So Savvy.” When I tried to click on the article to read it while driving down the road (I don’t recommend driving while reading, but I couldn’t resist) I went through a zone without AT&T Edge or 3G coverage (too bad I didn’t have my Verizon Droid). For the next 35 minutes I imagined what Tim had written – driving down the highway in East Texas waiting impatiently for my iPhone to switch from ‘Searching’ to Edge or 3G. When I finally got enough service to load his post I was surprised.

Tim wrote that ShopSavvy reminded him of “the fundamental shortsightedness of so many of our economic decisions, that flaw in human nature that makes us seize on temporary advantage without thinking of the long-term consequences.” He suggested that pursuit of the lowest price will ‘hasten the demise of many retailers’ and ultimately result in increased prices.

First, I think Tim’s premise is flawed. Eliminating mega-retailers won’t increase prices – the internet will make sure of that. Second, to suggest that applications like ShopSavvy are somehow to blame for the demise of mega-retailers is sort of silly. If mega-retailers are on the way out it won’t be the fault of applications written by a tiny company in Dallas, Texas. Why did Circuit City fail? Circuit City did not lose to the internet, it lost to Best Buy. Best Buy stores were better stocked, easier to navigate, staffed by employees who seem to care and often have great deals. For every purchase I make online I make four in a local retailer like Best Buy. If Tim is worried that ShopSavvy somehow takes away from mega-retailers I think he should realize that the real culprit is the internet itself.

The moment the internet was created retail shopping was forever changed. The internet made information about products and pricing available to anyone with a computer and more recently anyone with a smartphone. Savvy shoppers have been checking online retail prices from the very start (see Amazon.com). I wish Tim’s article had been titled, “Why using the internet to shop might not be so savvy.” Ironically ShopSavvy can provide a retailer with the ability to understand and respond to a shopper’s behavior. Shoppers who just use the internet are simply lost from the retailers perspective. I would argue applications like ShopSavvy might be the BEST thing to happen to local retail in a long time.

At the end of the day I don’t agree with Tim’s premise, but I could respect it more if it called out the real culprit. Tim explains that he rarely shops in physical stores, “I do most of my shopping online, and I love the convenience. But when I do go to local stores to browse physical products, I make sure to buy there, even if there’s a better price online. I’m paying a little extra for that right to walk up and touch the product before I buy it.”

I have a dirty little secret I would like to share with Tim: 100% of retail shoppers know that they can buy everything cheaper online. They don’t need ShopSavvy to explain this to them. ShopSavvy organizes information (reviews, pricing and inventory) about the products our users are interested in buying. Ironically, the most compelling part of ShopSavvy is how it helps users discover local prices and inventory. Our data shows that users spend 75% more time clicking on local prices than online prices. They want to know that the store next door sells the same item for less AND has it in inventory. If shoppers were to follow Tim’s advice they would be compelled to buy an item regardless of price. If I was a retailer and saw Tim coming into my store I would mark everything up 500% knowing he would pay the markup.

I suspect mega-retailers would prefer that Tim do more of his shopping in their stores even if he continued to buy most everything online. I don’t think they would be offended at all. If he shopped in Best Buy he might be surprised that Best Buy would match online retailers like Amazon.com. Mega-retailers like Walmart, Target and Best Buy all focus on price. They claim to have the best prices, they price match and they offer in-store deals all of the time. Some retailers like Nordstrom focus on service – I buy clothes at Nordstrom because they help me buy clothes – I do not buy clothes at Macy’s because they focus on price. Retail is changing – the internet started it. ShopSavvy won’t be the demise of retail. Anyway, thanks for the mention Tim (surely we will get a few more downloads because of it).

I just awoke to find a few great articles on ShopSavvy this morning.  The first article was from ABC News that described ShopSavvy as a “Lifestyle App That Makes Life Easier“.  Ki Heussner from ABC’s Gadget Guide described ShopSavvy as “An oldie-but-goodie,” suggesting, “ShopSavvy is a necessary application for every budget-conscious shopper.” Thanks for the mention Ki!

The next article was by Geoffrey Fowler and Yukari Kane from the Wall Street Journal titled, “Price Check: Finding Deals with a Phone“.  The article begins by describing how Erik Olson used ShopSavvy to scan the price of a Blu-ray DVD at Best Buy only to find it cheaper at Walmart.  Later in the article Ivory Johnson of Georgia explained, “ShopSavvy has changed my method of shopping.”  Ivory’s sister explained that his sister used ShopSavvy to get a $50 refund from a retailer after scanning the barcode on the Flip UltraHD camera she had previously bought.

Next, I read an article by Kent McNeil suggesting that ShopSavvy would help Ebay drive more than $500M in mobile-based revenue this year alone.  I can’t wait to see what we can do in 2010.  Kent specifically noted that ShopSavvy is one of two companies that are using PayPal’s open technology for payments (the other is Twitpay.me).  Kent’s piece was a followup on a USA Today article titled, “CEO tries to breath new life into eBay and PayPal.“  The article mentioned that ShopSavvy was part of eBay’s new strategy.

Finally lots of little mentions of the new release, specifically the iPhone Bible, MacMegasite, prMac,  reported that we had launched ShopSavvy v.1.1 for iPhone and Touch.

Lots of folks have asked whether or not ShopSavvy will support the new DataBar barcode standard for fresh food, jewelry and go-it-yourself hardware products.  The easy answer is that we do and will continue to do so.  These new codes include additional data including serial numbers, lot numbers and expiration dates.  The standard will go into effect by 2010 with a target date of 2014 for all fresh products.  Here is what they look like:

(note: ShopSavvy iPhone users can ignore this post)

When we submitted our application to Google’s Android Developer Challenge it was called GoCart.  Our logo was the blue ‘cart’-like icon seen below.  After we won the challenge T-Mobile asked us to change our name to something more ‘shopping’ oriented, they suggested ShopSavvy and we adopted the new name.  However, we didn’t have time to change our icon before the official launch and stuck with the blue cart icon.

Soon afterward Google released their ‘icon design guidelines‘ for Android and after a STRONG recommendation from from Deutsche Telekom that we needed to change the blue cart into something that looked like a barcode.  Evidently ‘ShopSavvy’ doesn’t translate into German so we decided to comply with Google’s icon design guidelines AND Deutsche Telekom’s request to include a barcode in the icon.  The resulting icon was a 3D panel with a simulated barcode on it.  The new icon was VERY unpopular as evidenced by scores of angry market comments, emails and blog posts.  I blogged about it here.

When we were ready to launch the iPhone version of ShopSavvy we got lots of negative feedback about our logo.  Everyone thought we needed something more compelling.  More than 4 different designers worked on the project, but we never found anything compelling.  We still didn’t have an icon by November 2nd – on November 3rd we were debuting ShopSavvy for the iPhone at the PayPal Innovate conference and HAD to have an icon for the demo.  On the plane to San Francisco Rylan create a very simple tilted sticker with an edge peeled up.  It began to grow on us and we decided that we would go with it for the demo.  To launch ShopSavvy for Black Friday we had to go ahead and submit the app to Apple with the sticker icon.  What do you think?

Our plan is to use the sticker icon on BOTH iPhone and Android (as well as WinMo and RIM).  This means a third icon change on Android.  The sticker doesn’t meet the Android design guidelines, but it would seem Motorola decided to abandon them for the Droid and Eris as well.  Did you notice?  I think it would be nice if we could have the same icon on all platforms and I think the sticker is the way to go.  We want your feedback before we change.  What do you think?  Here are the icons side-by-side:

We have decided to license our barcode scanning technology under two free models:

• Data Sharing. Free License for Applications that share their data with ShopSavvy (food data, price data, allergy data, review data and so on).  If your data can help ShopSavvy provide users with a better experience we will share our technology with you for free.  We will ALSO provide a link to your app providing you with a free advertising channel.
• Publishing License. Free License for Applications that use Big in Japan’s app publishing services.  We announced this model previously in post titled, “License our barcode scanning tech for free” (you can read more there).

We have scanning libraries for Android AF, Android non-AF, RIM, 2/3G iPhone, 3GS iPhone and Windows Mobile.  If you are interested just email or call Jennifer Donica at 1+214.550.3534 jdonica@architel.com.

The Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy is on hold indefinitely.  I wouldn’t expect a Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy until sometime next year.  Here is the story:

Late this summer we put EVERYTHING on hold and worked to build a Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy for the Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace launch. Our friends at Microsoft offered us a slot as the feature app for the major launch event – many of which never ended up occurring.  We completed ShopSavvy, but at the 11th hour we learned of a requirement that was never documented or explained to us – the need for SQL Server CE to be included in ShopSavvy.  It is a long technical story, but basically we needed to compile an installer for our installer.  In other platforms such as Android and iPhone all applications share a database – each application using it as necessary.  On Windows Mobile each application must include its own database SERVER (not just a client) requiring 2MB of space.  Nightmare.  This will be resolve in a future release of Windows Mobile.  In the meantime the coding effort required to add this functionality to ShopSavvy would have delayed our iPhone release even further and we decided we had to release prior to Black Friday.

When we first released ShopSavvy on Android we had lots of users complain that when they scanned the barcode on their Snickers Bar or Diet Coke they didn’t get a result.  Our answer?  Why are you scanning Snickers and Coke?  The answer was fairly straightforward – scanning is fun.  At the end of the day ShopSavvy was designed as a FREE application to enable a user to scan the barcode of high value items that tend to be sold at very different prices in a local area and online.  What are we good at?

• Books, DVDs and Video Games (represent 25% of our scans)
• Consumer electronics (represent 50% of our scans)
• Soft goods, groceries, health and beauty items ((25% of our scans)

Why do we ‘suck’ at groceries?  First, it is difficult to get grocery stores to share pricing and inventory data.  Primarily because most grocery retailers don’t have the technology to support a live feed, but also because they are concerned about price transparency (go into a major chain and look at pricing for milk and eggs in urban areas and compare it suburban areas, you will be surprised).  The second reason we ‘suck’ is simply because barcodes on food items are HARD to read.  They are often on flexible plastic packages or curved bottles and our current version struggles scanning these items.

The WORST thing is that most people try out ShopSavvy by scanning a bottle of water or a candy bar.  If that is all you try you miss out on the real power of ShopSavvy.  Being able to determine online and local price and inventory for millions of items from thousands of retailers is what is great about ShopSavvy.  Of course, despite this post (and others like it) users will judge us on food items and as a result we are working on a) improving our coverage of groceries and b) improving our ability to scan hard to reach barcodes.

The easiest way to install ShopSavvy on Android is to visit the Android Market and download ShopSavvy right there.  Just select search and type: ShopSavvy.

If you don’t have access to the Android Market you can download the app directly from our servers HERE. This should be the latest version.

If you are visiting this page from your Android phone you can simply click HERE and install the app from the market.  This link WON’T work from a normal web browser so don’t complain when it doesn’t work.

Finally, if you have an iPhone you can click HERE.

Thank you for downloading the first ShopSavvy version for iPhone – version 1.0.  Our current release was sent to 100 beta testers, many of whom provided VERY detailed feedback that made it clear that our barcode scanning feature could use improvement.  First, we didn’t provide any sort of scanning hints – i.e. guides, arrows or pointers.  Second, our scanning technology supports both legacy non-AF camera such as the ones found on the G2 and G3 as well as the newer AF camera found on the 3GS.  We are going to submit a new version on Tuesday that should help resolve many of the scanning issues by including scanning hints and a different library for the AF cameras found on 3GS.  In the meantime, I figured it might be smart to explain how to scan a barcode using ShopSavvy Version 1.0:

• Light. The most important thing is to scan in a well lit area.  Most of the time we find that scanning problems are related to low light.  Make sure there is plenty of light.
• Hold it Still. Try not to shake. Try to hold at least one of the items perfectly still.  This is especially true on the 3GS because you need focus to scan. (the update should reduce this problem because it will be 90% faster)
• Glare. Of course in well lit areas there is often glare caused by bright overhead lights.  This is especially true on high gloss items.  Make sure the glare is not over the black lines of the barcode.
• Shadows. Just as glare hides the barcode from our view, shadows can prevent ShopSavvy from scanning your barcode.  Make sure there are no shadows over the barcode.
• Alignment. Try to hold the item at the same angle you are holding the phone.  The more angle between the barcode and the phone the longer a scan will take.
• Double Barcodes. Sometimes, expecially on books, there are two barcodes next to each other.  Often the UPC is the bigger barcode on the left and the smaller barcode on the right is the ‘suggested retail price code’.  If you include both on the screen ShopSavvy can get confused.  Try to ONLY include the bigger UPC barcode.  (the update will mitigate this issue by filtering out the small barcode)
• Proximity. Try holding the scanner pretty far away and SLOWLY move closer until the item scans.  Once you get the hang of the right distance you won’t need to do this, just hold it at the approximate distance and you should be good to go.  But don’t move in and out – try to keep the item at a single distance for a period of time, maybe a second or two. (the update will provide hints to make this easier)
• Item Selection. Don’t try to scan food items.  First, they don’t have great coverage and at the end of the day price comparison isn’t important on bottled water.  Second, the barcodes are often on curved surfaces and ShopSavvy has problems with curves. (the update will work better on curved surfaces)
• Focus (3GS). Since you have an auto-focus camera the barcode MUST be in focus.  (the update will make this easier)
• Focus (2G/3G). Since you have don’t have a focusable camera – don’t worry that the camera is out
• of focus – it will still work.

Here is a video of scanning with the 3GS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tTeCmvtHo0

Here is a video of scanning with the 2G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgZ5lYTOics

Download ShopSavvy for iPhone HERE.

Download ShopSavvy for Android HERE (direct link outside of market)

Download ShopSavvy for Android HERE (Android market link, only works on Android phone)