Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Web technologies and tools have seen an accelerated progress in the last years bringing added value to the marketing activity carried out at company level. The have always sought to facilitate production, distribution and communication processes. Moreover, the applications developed online have enabled the communication with the consumers and facilitated the fast sending of the information regarding the goods commercialised. The emergence and development of QR codes on the market enabled the marketing specialists to communicate easier with their target public as these codes help them send a range of information on the products / services commercialised, promotions, competitions, events held, etc. This paper looks at the way the QR codes were used in time in the marketing activities carried out by enterprises working in various business areas. Research of secondary sources was carried out in the period from 5.04.2015 - 3.05.2015, in Bucharest.
Keywords: online marketing, web technologies, online tools, mobile marketing, QR codes.
J.E.L. Classification: M31
1. QR code encoding versus decoding
QR codes were invented at Denso Wave by the Japanese Masahiro Hara in 1994. At first, they were intended for the car industry and then went on to being used by the pharmacy and food industry. The main purpose of QR codes was to streamline the products by including a large volume of data on the product in a small sized code (Schultz, 2013).
The utilisation frequency for QR codes has increased with the decision of the corporation Denso to offer them free of charge to those concerned (denso-wave.com).
The year 2002 saw a significant leap as to the development of QR codes; the QR decoding applications for mobile phones were launched. From that moment onwards, the QR decoding process can be run on any mobile phone equipped...