Last week, Ad Age published an article where the following comment was made about the convergence of shopper marketing with digital technologies:

“The killer app of mobile media may yet be in the store, as more consumers use their mobile devices to scan barcodes and get product reviews, coupons, or other promotional offers.”

Think about that for a moment.  When the Internet came along, it had a tremendous impact on shopper behavior; we did much of our researching and browsing online (even if we didn’t always purchase online).  Now, in a short time, with our mobile phones, we’ll be able to can scan a barcode and get reviews, coupons and other offers?  Wow.

As stores move to visually de-clutter (a big move of late), imagine creating your shopping list using a special app and then walking into a store where the app would scan the store and the store would send you all the specials in the categories of your choice.  Any manufacturers coupons that week?  Send those too.  Oh, and to save you time, we’ll tell you what aisle to find the merchandise – maybe even map a shopping plan for the store to save you time.  Finally, at check out, your mobile device would send the correct coupon information to the register via Wi-Fi or IR; other promotional offers could be sent to your phone if you’d like.

How to get that killer app to market fast?  Also last week, Mob4Hire announced the first “crowd-sourced mobile market research” service.  They have more than 20,000 application testers (mobsters) operating in 105 countries.  How this works is that when a new application is ready to be tested on the more than 330 mobile network carriers around the world, the mobsters download the test app to their mobile phone, test it on their network, and provide feedback to the developer.  Fast, comprehensive, and very cost efficient relative to how this is typically done today.

Where does this take your imagination?