Can Your Smart Phone Make You a Smarter Shopper?

December 27th, 2009

Here at Buxr, we take great pride in the fact that our community is made up of some of the smartest shoppers around, using the Internet to research products and prices before they ever set foot in a store.

But what do you do if you’re already in the store and stumble across what looks like a really great deal on a product you’ve been wanting? Since you haven’t had a chance to research the price, do you pass up the deal and hope you’ll find a better one? Or, do you jump at the deal while it’s there for the taking?

Now, a new generation of mobile phone applications is helping shoppers do research on the fly, thereby taking some of the guesswork out of deal-finding.

Shopping Smarter With Mobile Apps

With competition heating up from low-priced Websites, many brick-and-mortar stores are finally realizing that they need transparent pricing just to get shoppers in the door. As a result, some are allowing third-party app developers to tap directly into their databases of products and prices.

To use many of these apps, you simply provide information about your location and the product you’re seeking. The app then helps you find which local or online retailers are offering the best prices on your product. To make the process even easier, some apps may use the phone’s GPS device to collect information about your location, or they may use the phone’s built-in camera to collect product information.

There are a variety of ways – some obvious and some not so obvious – that you can use these mobile phone applications to shop smarter:

• Instead of visiting half a dozen different stores in search of the best deal, you can use an app to quickly figure out where to go for the best price.
• If you’re attached to a certain store (maybe for its great customer service or product assortment), then you can use a mobile app while you’re in the store to determine whether they’re offering a competitive price on a product you’ve seen.
• Armed with information about who has the best pricing, you may even find that you can haggle your way to a better deal. While many traditional retailers have policies against matching prices – especially from online-only retailers – they also face pressure to not let shoppers walk out the door and go to a competitor. If a checkout clerk doesn’t have the authority to match the price you’ve found online, a store manager may be able to help you.

Which App Is Right for You?

To use any of these applications, you’ll first need to have a mobile phone connected to the Internet. This could be a problem if you live in an area where access to the mobile Internet is limited, erratic or non-existent.

Beyond this basic requirement, some applications are available only on certain types of smart phones. For example, the RedLaser app and Holiday Gift Guide are available only on the iPhone. Others, such as ShopSavvy by are available on both the iPhone and Android. And an application from Amazon, which allows users to compare in-store deals with Amazon’s pricing, is available on these phones as well as the Blackberry.

There is also the question of cost. While many of the apps are free, you may have to pay a nominal fee for others. For example, the RedLaser app, which allows you to scan products with your iPhone and compare prices, costs $1.99 to download.

When using the apps, you’ll also need to take into account that there is often a delay between when retailers physically change prices or inventory and when these changes show up in their inventory systems. As a result, some information may be inaccurate or out-of-date.

To help you decide which app, if any, is right for you, here’s a list of some of the more popular ones:

• ShopSavvy by Big in Japan Inc. – This app is free and runs on the iPhone and Android. By scanning barcodes or typing in produce names, you can read reviews and compare prices for 20 million products at 20,000 retailers.
• Where to Shop by TheFind Inc – This app is free and runs on the iPhone or your mobile browser. By searching for product names, you can compare prices for 400 million products at 500,000 online stores and 300,000 brick-and-mortar store locations.
• RedLaser by Occipital LLC – For $1.99, you can get this app on you iPone. Scan bar coded items and compare prices on hundreds of thousands of products from GoogleProducts and TheFind database. Please keep in mind that this app works best on the iPhone 3GS, because of it’s autofocus camera.
• Holiday Gift Guide by NearbyNow Inc – This free iPhone application allows you to browse 1,200 items on the holiday gift lists for 20 magazines and retailers and find them locally at 28,000 physical stores or online at 40 retailers.
• Milo.com by Milo.com Inc. – This free application works with any mobile browser and allows you to search and compare prices for 1.6 million products at 30 retailers.
• Amazon.com by Amazon Inc. – This free application, which works on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android, allows you to search and compare prices from local retailers for 1.6 million products sold on Amazon.com.

Getting Started

Once you’ve found the app or apps that work best to you, you can get started using your smart phone to save even more when you shop. And, don’t forget: you may be able to earn even more by sharing the deals you find here at buxr.com.

Entry Filed under: Shopping