Will anyone actually scan the QR code?

The premise under the mandates

The digital carrier is no longer a proposal. The EU has legislated QR-borne EPR identification from 2027 and carrier-linked reuse information from 2029. France routes sorting detail through digital layers. The barcode transition puts a scannable 2D code on essentially every package within the decade. The regulatory premise is that information moved off-pack remains information — that consumers who need the detail will scan for it.

Stated willingness to scan is high. Measured scanning of packaging codes, wherever it has been counted, is low. No independently audited real-world study of packaging scan rates was found. The gap between stated and measured scanning is among the widest in this theme. The mandates are being built on the stated side. The only population-level measurement of the revealed side identified here is fifteen years old.

Stated willingness

GS1 US reports that “77% of consumers believe that product information is important when making a purchase” and “79% of shoppers are more likely to purchase products with a scannable barcode/QR code (via smartphone) that provides the information they want” (GS1 US, 2024). Strength grade: weak-to-moderate — industry-commissioned, promoting the commissioner’s own 2D migration, sample size undisclosed.

OPRL’s 2025 UK survey (n = 5,041): 83 per cent of 18–34-year-olds versus 52 per cent of over-55s say they would use QR codes for disposal information (OPRL, 2025). A thirty-point age gradient recurs in each dataset cited here. Who is excluded by packaging labels? takes it up as an equity finding.

The gesture itself is familiar. A September 2020 survey of over 2,100 consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom found “84% of people have scanned a QR code before, with 32% most recently having scanned a QR code in the past week” (MobileIron, 2020). Strength grade: moderate — vendor survey, consistent with the restaurant-and-payments shift, measuring scanning in general rather than packaging. Consumers can scan. The open question is whether they do, on packs.

Measured scanning

Three data points constitute the entire measured record located.

comScore’s metered panel, June 2011: 14 million mobile users in the United States — “6.2 percent of the total mobile audience” — scanned a QR or barcode that month; of those scanners, 35.3 per cent scanned a code on product packaging (comScore, 2011). Strength grade: moderate-to-strong methodologically (metered behaviour, not self-report); fifteen years old, before native camera scanning. When scanning required a dedicated application, roughly two per cent of mobile users touched a packaging code in a month.

SmartLabel, the American grocery QR-linked system: by late 2017, about 14,000 products, and roughly 400,000 visits in a quarter (GMA, via Grocery Dive, 2017). Strength grade: moderate — industry-reported, “[d]espite virtually no educational outreach.” Four hundred thousand quarterly visits across fourteen thousand products is on the order of ten visits per product per day nationally, for products selling in the millions of units. Industry adoption outpaced consumer engagement by orders of magnitude.

Practitioner literature titled “Why Consumers Aren’t Scanning Your QR Codes” publishes adoption metrics (nearly a quarter of wine and spirits products carrying codes) and publishes no scan rates at all (Blue Bite, n.d.). Searches for peer-reviewed, independently audited real-world scan rates on packaging returned no such study.

Why stated and revealed diverge

Willingness questions measure a conditional: whether the respondent would scan if the information were wanted. The shelf encounter lasts seconds. Disposal is habitual. Low-stakes uncertainty is often resolved by guessing — 42 per cent of the unsure admit to it. Scanning is a research act. Disposal is a reflex.

The scanners the record does show skew young and engaged. A two-layer label system with voluntary scanning is, on this evidence, a two-tier information system. Over-55 recyclers and excluded consumers remain on the printed layer.

That does not mean the digital layer fails its regulatory purpose. The EU’s carrier mandates are not premised on mass consumer scanning. EPR identification digitalisation serves auditors, sorters and enforcement. The two-layer claims doctrine, in QR codes and the law, assumes consumers will not scan and requires essentials to stay printed. Scan-rate evidence bears on the consumer-education theory of the digital label. It leaves machine-facing and compliance theories untouched.

Three architectures

System-facing codes (EPR identification, sorting equipment) do not need consumer scan rates. Consumer-education codes (disposal detail behind the QR) do, and the measured rates do not support mass use. Hybrid two-layer labels need evidence that the printed layer still carries everything the consumer must act on without scanning. The located evidence supports the first architecture, does not support the second as a mass channel, and makes the third a print-first design problem rather than a scan-rate problem.

The barcode precedent

The linear barcode succeeded while being scanned by consumers approximately never. It was machine-facing infrastructure. Treating a QR disposal label as if it were a barcode for people reverses that lesson.

What would settle it

Audited scan analytics from a representative sample of QR-carrying SKUs — scans per thousand units sold, by category, demographic and prompt condition — published by the platforms that already log them. That study has not been run. Until it is, stated willingness is a poor basis for moving sorting instructions off the pack.

References

Blue Bite (n.d.) Why consumers aren't scanning your QR codes. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

comScore (2011) 14 million Americans scanned QR or bar codes on their mobile phones in June 2011, August. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

GMA, via Grocery Dive (2017) SmartLabel usage is on track and growing, September. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

GS1 US (2024) GS1 US celebrates 50-year barcode 'scanniversary', press release, 26 June. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

MobileIron (2020) QR code security research, September, via Nasdaq. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

OPRL (2025) Consumer behaviour and attitudes towards recycling (Spring 2025 survey), as reported at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

GS1 US figures are verbatim from its release, which does not disclose the sample size; the commissioning interest is flagged. OPRL's age-split figures are as reported in the trade coverage of its self-commissioned survey. MobileIron figures are verbatim from the release coverage; the survey concerns QR familiarity generally (menus, payments), not packaging, and is used only for the familiarity precondition. comScore figures are verbatim from the 2011 release; the measurement is metered-panel and its age is stated prominently wherever used. SmartLabel figures (14,000 products; 400,000 visits May–July 2017; the no-outreach concession) are from the trade report of the industry presentation; the per-product arithmetic is calculated in this article from those figures. The absence of any peer-reviewed, independently audited real-world packaging scan-rate study is an absence claim based on the searches conducted for this article, with the practitioner source's own silence on rates cited as corroboration. The distinction between consumer-education and system-facing theories of the digital label, and the two-tier composition reading, are analysis presented in this article.

Last verified: 18 August 2026.