Toshiba Scientists Offer New Tool For Consumers

Scientists at Toshiba's Corporate Research and Development Center, in Japan have developed a system that offers shoppers advice on what to buy based on the product barcode and the current blog buzz around the gadget. The team describes the system, WOM Scouter, this month in the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies.

If you've ever been at the mall hoping to choose, the latest mp3 player, camera, high-definition TV, you know how confusing the huge array of choice can be. You only have the sales assistant's word for whether a particular brand or model has a good reputation. Checking each and every model while in the store would be almost impossible, without a lot of mobile web browsing and manually entering model numbers into search engines.

Now, Takahiron Kawamura and colleagues have developed WOM (word-of-mouth) Scouter to allow shoppers to get the latest reviews for a product they are looking to buy simply while they are in store. The process involves taking a photo of the item's barcode with a cell phone camera. The WOM Scouter then looks up the item's meta data via the internet and gathers information from blogs and websites that review the product.

The WOM Scouter than uses natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze what blogs it collated are saying about the product and provides a straightforward positive or negative opinion on the product's reputation. Even the most confused shopper can make an informed decision on that basis, knowing that the blogosphere will support their choice.

The Toshiba team has tested WOM Scouter in a consumer electronics store and in a book store and suggest that the system represents a case of semantics used to provide an instant benefit in a mobile computing environment. In essence, WOM Scouter is one of the first web 3.0 applications that utilises the fundamentals of the original web connectivity, the social media aspects of web 2.0, and provides a service based on the meaning, or semantics, of the data it handles.

WOM Scouter could be adapted not only to improve the shopping experience, but to help in choosing a movie to see, a restaurant at which to eat, or potentially whether or not to accept a job offer.

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Ice Cream, Frozen Desserts Market Expected to Fatten to $27.6 Billion by 2012

Despite unchanging consumer demand and fickle consumer tastes, the market for frozen desserts is expected to grow by more than $4 billion by 2012, according to The U.S. Market for Ice Cream and Related Frozen Desserts, a new report from market research publisher Packaged Facts.

Dollar sales continue to grow annually, but not because Americans are eating more frozen desserts: instead, the population is paying more for what it eats. Prices of all dairy products are at an all-time high, and frozen desserts are no exception. Although these higher prices make shoppers hesitant about purchasing frozen desserts at the retail level, they sure don't hesitate at the foodservice level. This phenomenon is driving foodservice sales while retail sales are slowing.

Although ice cream accounted for 59.2 percent (or $13.8 billion) of all U.S. frozen dessert sales in 2007, ice cream's place at the dessert table dropped 0.3 percentage points from 2006. Sales likely went to frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt's 4.1 percent CAGR from 2003 to 2007 is the highest of all frozen desserts categories. In 2007 alone, frozen yogurt sales grew 12 percent from the 2006 level. With consumers seeking better-for-you indulgence in a frozen form, frozen yogurt manufacturers have engaged in more innovation and new flavors, helping to revive the packaged frozen yogurt business.

"Because this is a mature market, growth for one marketer often comes at the expense of another. And within a company, growth of an individual product line or flavor often cannibalizes sales of another item. This is particularly true with frozen novelties, where product life cycles are extremely short," says Cathy Minkler, editor of Packaged Facts. "Shoppers tend to browse shelves, actively on the lookout for new tastes, informative and exciting packaging, interesting product innovations, or products offering a 'surprise' factor."

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