QR Code Relies On Sunlight to Deliver Deals, Makes QR Codes Slightly Less Useless

24.05.2012
It's fairly well established now that QR codes, well, kind of suck. Although lots of people own a smartphone or gadget with a scanner now, no-one really bothers to scan them--that's . Still, that doesn't mean smart uses of the technology should go unnoticed, just like Korean Emart's .

If you walk past a Emart store during 23 hours of the day, you'll just see a pretty strange art installation. But visit when the sun is shining between 12 and 1 in the afternoon and you'll be presented with a giant QR discount code.

Emart uses these "shadow QR codes" as a way of bringing more business to the store at lunchtime, when it's at the quietest point of the day. Anyone who scans the code at this time is sent to a on the store's website, plus a coupon worth around $12. It seems the quirky use of QR worked, because , Emart recorded a 25% rise in lunch-hour sales and a 58% increase in membership in the month after it installed these shadow codes.

But there's one glaring question: If it's a cloudy or rainy day, does this mean there are no deals?

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