ORLANDO, Fla. – Although the food industry had set June 30 as the date when CPG manufacturers would completely transition to an entirely new bar code -- the GS1 DataBar -- on coupons, it now appears that many manufacturers will postpone that move until the latter part of this year or beyond.
“I think you’ll see a lot of manufacturers waiting until the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2012,” said John Morgan, executive director, the Association of Coupon Professionals, at the U Connect Live conference here yesterday. Morgan commented as an audience member at a session on the DataBar. The conference was sponsored by GS1 US, Lawrenceville, N.J., in partnership with VICS.
The DataBar, a robust bar code that will incorporate up to 74 digits on coupons, has been sharing space on manufacturer coupons since 2008 with the traditional but more limited 12-digit UPC-A bar code during an interim phase-in period.
The Joint Industry Coupon Committee (JICC), the industry group that sets coupon policy, established Jan. 1, 2011, as the date manufacturers could begin issuing DataBar-only coupons, and June 30 as the date for completely switching over to the DataBar.
The JICC has not officially postponed the June 30 deadline for the final transition to the coupon DataBar, said Alan Williams, vice president of application development for Ahold USA, Landover, Md., and co-chair of the JICC, during a presentation he gave at the U Connect DataBar session.
But since the DataBar is a voluntary standard, CPG manufacturers can make their own decisions as to when to make the change, based on their read of retailers’ readiness to scan the new bar code, Williams said.
