BACKGROUND

Online shopping can provide a convenient alternative to shopping at physical stores. For example, groceries can be purchased online and delivered to customers. However, online merchants frequently lack information (e.g., during an onboarding of a customer) about the items customers have been purchasing locally, and customers have traditionally not had access to a mechanism to efficiently provide product identifiers to online merchants, especially in bulk. The disconnect between the identity of items customers purchase in physical stores and the identity of items offered for sale online hinders the ability to direct customers towards items offered for sale online that are comparable in quality, brand, size, etc. to what customers are used to being able to locate and purchase at a local store.

