COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM FOR PRESENTING INFORMATION TO A CONSUMER

摘要

A method and system is disclosed of providing information on an item of merchandise to a consumer. In accordance with the invention, the consumer scans a bar code associated with the item in a scanner/delivery unit. The bar code data is transmitted to a data processing unit where audio or visual information corresponding to the bar code scanned and the item of merchandise is retrieved from the data base and delivered to the scanner/delivery unit to be presented to the consumer. A plurality of scanner/delivery units can exist on a common network, with each scanner/delivery unit having its own TCP/IP address.