Prototyping a Community-Generated, Mobile Device-Enabled Database of Environmental Impact Reviews of Consumer Products

Author

Tomlinson, Bill

Author_Institution

Univ. of California, Irvine

fYear

2008

fDate

7-10 Jan. 2008

Firstpage

154

Lastpage

154

Abstract

GreenScanner is a system that helps people engage in environmentally preferable purchasing during their everyday consumer transactions. This system has two parts: a dynamic online database of community-generated environmental impact reviews of products, and a mobile phone application that allows consumers to access these reviews at a point of purchase by photographing a product´s universal product code (UPC). This paper describes a prototype of the system that was released publicly in April 2006, and analyzes the results of that deployment. Over its first year of existence, the site received approximately 31,000 hits. However, during that time, only 79 subjective comments were uploaded. This paper analyzes the site´s usage patterns, and describes a number of improvements to the system that are currently under way.

Keywords

electronic commerce; mobile handsets; product codes; purchasing; GreenScanner system; community-generated environmental impact product review; consumer product; consumer transaction; dynamic online database; mobile device-enabled database; mobile phone; purchasing; universal product code; Consumer products; Glass; Labeling; Mobile handsets; Pattern analysis; Product codes; Production; Prototypes; Solids; Transaction databases;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Proceedings of the 41st Annual

Conference_Location

Waikoloa, HI

ISSN

1530-1605

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.2008.365

Filename

4438857