2023 QR Codes in Retail Penetration Report
If you haven’t noticed at Brij, we are a little bit excited about the practical application of QR codes. QR codes are more than just monochromatic squares mindlessly slapped on to a billboard, brochure, or packaging wrapper.
When there is intention, QR codes have the potential to be gateways to brand story, product instructions, sweepstakes, marketing campaigns, and revenue. With QR codes, brands can not only create amazing experiences for their customers, but also drive business results.
To that end, we've been hard at work sharing our learnings. Earlier in the summer:
- We wrote a QR Code Adoption and Perception research report
- We released a searchable database of QR Code examples
But it left us with more questions. QR codes are clearly trending in retailers around the country, but we wondered what was the actual penetration rate in stores and if it varied store-to-store and category-to-category.
So we ventured into the popular stores with a mission to measure QR code adoption in retail.
The seven stores we visited were
- Pop Up Grocer
- Target
- Whole Foods
- Sephora
- Ulta
- CVS
- Macy’s
Their diverse product range and size of the stores provides an interesting set of insights on brand QR code usage in the retail setting.
TL:DR it’s early days for usage of QR codes on packaging and there is a big opportunity for brands to enhance their brand category, regardless of category.
Our Methodology
Our research process was straightforward. The primary focus was on grocery, convenience, and beauty items, areas where we saw the most QR codes. In each store, we broke the store down into categories and went through each aisle in search of QR codes.
We did not visit the frozen foods aisle in grocery stores, as it would require us to keep freezer doors open for a long period of time. Additionally, we recognized the presence of a QR code at the brand level not the product SKU.
Over all, we looked 2,815 brands’ products. The process was time consuming, but the research speaks for itself. Below might be the most definitive study on QR codes in U.S retail to date.
What we learned
At the Store Level
The average QR Code penetration into stores was 12.6%, meaning most brands are not putting QR codes on their products today.
The outliers were Pop Up Grocer on the high-end, and Ulta Beauty on the low-end. Ulta Beauty is probably best compared directly to Sephora. Sephora had almost half as many products as Ulta, and Ulta had considerably more in the way of hair care and appliances, which tended not to feature QR codes.
Pop Up Grocer is a boutique grocery store in New York City that features some of the trendiest new CPG brands. These brands are all relatively new compared to incumbent brands in big retailers that have been around a long time. The brands in Pop Up Grocer are small, agile, and willing to try new tactics that would take years to implement in a massive company like Coca-Cola.
(Coca-Cola actually uses QR codes. We critiqued their QR code program here. Read that article and you’ll have a better QR code strategy then they do!)
