Home Depot recently partnered with Scanbuy to bring QR codes to its products. If you read us regularly, you know how QR codes can help a business and how users are ever more accustomed to seeing codes wherever they may roam.

Here's how Home Depot capitalizes on that new reality. When scanned by smartphones, its QR codes help you access how-to videos, demos, accessories, buying guides or project guides related to your item of interest—making it easier to expedite your personal fix-it project. And users can make purchases via mobile without even setting foot inside the store.

Although the QR-code approach won't necessarily spike sales, it can "drive up the conversion rate," Forrester's Julie Ask says. In other words, providing additional information at their fingertips can help uncertain customers move closer toward a purchasing decision.

Over on the soft-drink side, Pepsico is testing a social vending system that doesn't just let you buy its drinks, it lets you gift drinks to others and access its Refresh Project, a crowdsourced social empowerment effort that's getting results nationwide.

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