Problem with Traditional Coupon

Coupon barcode has been in use in retail industry for a long time (mid 1980). At first, it was UPC code with system ID 5. Since UPC code cannot hold more than 12 digits, it requires another barcode to hold the additional information like offer code, expiration date or household ID numbers. Therefore, it gets extension to UCC/EAN 128 barcode attached to it. EAN 13 barcode was also in use instead of UPC code, which starts with 99, hence called EAN 99 coupon barcode. After more than 20 years in use, now there is a need to encode more data for complex couponing, and accommodate longer company ID, and the traditional coupon code becomes less efficient and sometimes not usable at all.

• Cannot accommodate longer company ID: It cannot accommodate bigger Company Prefix ID: Traditional UPC/EAN Coupon code can hold company prefix with 6 digits long, but now GS1 is assigning Company Prefix that is more than 6 digits long. Therefore company holding ID number with more than 6 digits long cannot use old UPC barcode for their coupon.
• Complex offer code not possible: For marketing purposes, many complex offers are not possible to encode with old coupon barcode. For example, buy a shampoo and a conditioner, and get a hair get free.
• Frequent manual entry cause delay: In many cases, salesman needs to enter information manually with traditional coupon barcode, especially when a product is free. This manual process delays the purchase process.
• Manual entry cause error: Since old coupon cannot hold many data, information is required to enter manually and hence make the process more error prone.
• Delay and error at register is very costly: Delay at register and coupon processed wrongfully cost retailer a huge amount of money.
  

There are many limitations and disadvantages with the traditional UPC/EAN based coupons. In order to encounter these problems GS1 comes up with a new solution for coupon barcode. Instead of using UPC barcode and Extended UCC/EAN part, it is decided to use GS1 DataBar Expanded Stacked (formerly RSS Expanded Stacked) barcode. This barcode can hold up to 74 numeric data with multiple application Identifiers, like expiration date, serial number, etc.

GS1 DataBar Explained

DataBar Encodation
GS1 DataBar (formerly RSS Barcode) consists of few barcode symbologies which can further categorized into 3 groups.

Group 1:

• GS1 DataBar Regular
• GS1 DataBar Truncated
• GS1 DataBar Stacked
• GS1 DataBar Stacked Omni Directional

This group encodes 13 digits data and appends a mod 10 check digit at the end. It also contains a linkage flag in the beginning to indicate whether a 2D barcode is attached to it or not. If it is starts with ‘0’ it will not expect a 2D part, otherwise a 2D barcode is attached. Therefore, all together a 14 digit barcode can have 2 x 10¹³ variations without counting 2D parts. All the barcodes in this group share same encoding technique and have the same pattern. GS1 DataBar Truncated barcode, as the name suggests, shortens the height of regular barcode and it is usually used in a tight place where bigger size barcode is hard to accomodate. A GS1 DataBar Stacked, however, chops off pattern in two rows separated by 2 narrow rows of separator bar. While GS1 DataBar Stacked has a shorter bar height, GS1 DataBar Stacked Omni directional has a standard full height and can be scanned omni directionally.

GS1 DataBar with Composite Component

Structurally GS1 DataBar has three components:

• Guard Bar: A bar/space pattern which indicates the start and end of the barcode. For stacked barcode each row contains guard bars in the beginning and at the end.
• Data Character: A complex algorithm converts encoded digits into Data Characters which is represented with few bars and spaces. For this group of barcode we have 4 data characters.
• Finder Pattern: Finder patterns are a bar/space patters to indicate the specific location of the data characters. It also calculate check digit. In this group of barcode we have two finder patterns.

Group 2:

• GS1 DataBar Limited

This group which has only one symbology which is different from other barcodes structurally and functionally. It encodes 13 digits, but it has an indicator flag in addition to a 2D linkage flag, leaving other 12 digits for data, Therefore, it can encode 2 x 2 x 10¹² different numbers. It has two Data Characters, and a check digit in the middle of them. It also contains guard bars in the beginning and at the end of the barcode. It is not suitable for omni directional scanning.

GS1 DataBar Limited

GS1 DataBar Llimited with Composite Component

Group 3

• GS1 DataBar Expanded
• GS1 DataBar Expanded Stacked

This group is completely different than other two groups. It is a variable length barcode symbology, and can encode up to 74 digits or 41 alpha numeric characters. Its structure can hold up to 22 segments. Like others, this group also consists of Data Characters, Finder Pattern, guard Bars, and check digit pattern. It has a full height and can be scanned omni directionally. The two types of barcodes in this group can encode variable length data by applying application identifier or AI. AI tells decoder how long is the data for the corresponding Indentifier. For example, AI (17) indicates an expiration date which is 6 digits long. Sometimes we will have variable length AI. For example, AI (21) represents a serial number, which can be 1 to 21 digits long. To indicate the end of the number we append FNC1 character at the end of the serial data.

GS1 Expanded

GS1 DataBar Expanded with Composite Component

GS1 Expanded Stacked also follows the similar pattern but it  grows by adding rows at the bottom. You can control how wide each row will be by changing segment per row value.

GS1 Expanded Stacked

GS1 DataBar Expanded Stacked w/Composite Component

GS1 Expanded Stacked is also used in coupon industry along with many different industries, especially health care and freshproduce sector. It gains a lot of popularity due to its encoding capabilities of many application identifier for different purposes. In coupon industry, currently the use of expanded stacked barcode is in transition period. Before everyone officially moves to Expanded Stacked barcode, it is now being used as interim coupon format. In interim format, Expanded Stacked barcode is appended with upc code replacing UCC/EAN part.

GS1 DataBar Interim Coupon

Barcode 101: How to Compose Data for DataBar Coupon Code.

Barcode 101: How to Compose Data for DataBar Coupon Code.

Use of Interim coupon code gets prolonged for delayed GS1 Databar sunrise

GS1 postponed DataBar sunrise date from Jan 1st, 2010 to Jan 1st, 2011, when all the retailers should adopt dataBar barcode at their POS and coupon processing. Altough it becomes mandatory in 2014, but retailers will start sooner than later. Adopting databar might be easy for manufacturers, but for retailers it will be hectic and time and resource consuming. They have to replace their cheap scanners with expensive dataBar scannable scanners, which can add up to their total expense. They also have to update the current software in their POS systems. Given the current economic situation, it might be the worst time to roll out new technology like this.

In contrary, new dataBar can also boost retailers and manufacturers sales and help them to grow. New coupon code can be an ideal situation. Everyone from manufacturers to retailers are drawing customers attentions by using coupons, and new coupon codes can help them encode more data and apply coupon in many different ways. Manufacturers can give coupons to end customers in many different ways without the interaction of retailers. Retailers will also avoid hassles with coupon processing.

Besides coupon, fresh food industries are also rolling out GS1 DataBar Expanded Stacked barcode to encode more data in a single barcode. Fresh food can be labeled as organic or processed and production date, weight, expiration date, production place, etc can easily be placed in one single barcode. Small products like chewing gum, and lipstick can also get advantage of smaller dataBar Omni directional barcode.

With all these great features with DataBar, its just a matter of time when dataBar becomes the official barcode in retail industry. As for coupon, people are already using Interim DataBar Couopn and will continue to use it until 2014.