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The global trade item number (GTIN) is traditionally used to identify trade items and look up corresponding information within industrial supply chains. Recently, consumers have also started using GTINs to access additional product information with mobile barcode scanning applications. Providers of these applications use different sources to provide product names for scanned GTINs. In this paper we analyze data from eight publicly available sources for a set of GTINs scanned by users of a mobile barcode scanning application. Our aim is to measure the correctness of product names in online sources and to quantify the problem of product data quality. We use a combination of string matching and supervised learning to estimate the number of incorrect product names. Our results show that approximately 2 % of all product names are incorrect. The applied method is useful for brand owners to monitor the data quality for their products and enables efficient data integration for application providers., Electronic Markets, 24 (2), ISSN:1019-6781, ISSN:1422-8890

The main goal of this workshop is to explore how pervasive technologies can be integrated into today's brick and mortar retail environments to enhance the overall retail experience. Therefore we want to bring together researchers and industry partners to explore not only customer orientated technologies and services but also how those technologies can be used to increase the effectiveness and productivity and with that enhance the retailers profits.

This paper describes an experimental setup for the analysis of e-bike usage characteristics based on GPS data. Usage characteristics include parameters such as average and maximum velocity, trip lengths and distribution over daytime. Based on high resolution position measurement these parameters are extracted and compared to other studies on both e-bikes and conventional bicycles. We show that applying location technology to concurrent monitoring of a fleet of e-bikes yields higher quality in terms of resolution and accuracy (1), and is less intrusive (2) than obtaining these data by conventional user surveys. The findings form a proof-of-concept for the adoption of location technology to transportation and behavioral sciences and suggest further interdisciplinary collaboration in these fields.

Approximately 25 researchers from Europe, Asia, and the US discussed applications and new challenges of linking networked objects reporting about their state, location, and conditions to mobile phones, networked appliances, and devices. Reports of several research projects yielded a consensus that simply building platforms and tools is not enough for doing successful research. Instead, research should target larger user bases and aim for larger-scale evaluations. Accordingly, discussions emerged about how to drive user adoption of research prototypes, when development transits from research to service provision, and a new notion of privacy where users who share their own data are be granted access to services that build on this data. The overall conclusion was that users no longer communicate only with people but also are empowered to interact with objects. The IoT was seen to reach a tipping point of not only embracing corporate users but also approaching the everyday user.

Research has shown that product reviews on the Internet not only support consumers when shopping, but also lead to increased sales for retailers. Recent approaches successfully use smart phones to directly relate products (e.g. via barcode or RFID) to corresponding reviews, making these available to consumers on the go. However, it is unknown what modality (star ratings/text/video) users consider useful for creating reviews and using reviews on their mobile phone, and how the preferred modalities are different from those on the Web. To shed light on this we conduct two experiments, one of them in a quasi-realistic shopping environment. The results indicate that, in contrast to the known approaches, stars and pre-structured text blocks should be implemented on mobile phones rather than long texts and videos. Users prefer less and rather well-aggregated product information while on the go. This accounts both for entering and, surprisingly, also for using product reviews.

RFID was the most discussed topic at the Pervasive RFID/Near Field Communication Technology and Applications (PERTEC) workshop, held on March 19, 2007. Other topics discussed included management of data ownership in supply chains generated through RFID, integration of RFID and sensors, security and privacy, NFC applications, RFID-based location sensing, and emerging research challenges. RFID offers a huge variety of security approaches, starting from simple ID coding to lightweight cryptography and provide cost-effective solutions based on the value of products. RFID is a cheap, effective method to track many objects simultaneously, as well as it is unobtrusive and maintenance free. Other discussions at the conference centered on the value proposition of Near Field Communications (NFC) for end users and end-user innovation to build tools and infrastructure to allow users to use ubiquitous RFID tags.