Let's not mix barcode and channel issues. The retail locations have no barcode, they have a company that owns them and companies they work with and a classification within the chain hierarchy (sometimes) which identifies the service / product range of a particular location and naturally an address. --Juxo 18:35, 28 Aug 2004 (EEST)
- If they really are separate, absolutely right. However they are not quite separate: Sometimes big purchasers apply their own barcodes or different packaging has different barcodes. If this is *VERY* uncommon then we can avoid mixing them, as you say. If it is even going on 5% of the time they we have to think of the barcode as the product of channel and product information at once.
- Also things like fruit and vegetables and bulk items have no packaging but instead they have stickers with numbers that vary per channel but probably not per location... We need to think about stickers on fruit very carefully.
- This is a question some researcher should be able to resolve.
- By the way it is good to get past various power structure issues and get back to real work...