Cool jacpar...I am a systems engineer as well. I did not know where exactly to start when I first posted. From an engineering perspective, if you know some of the UPC and Postnet barcodes schemas, you can tie product scans directly to a binary website.
Example: Someone walks down the street and pass a newsstand, or walk through a mall, or walk in a movie or record store and sees an item, product, magazine, etc. They are interested in purchasing the item so they obtain it. When they get to the checkout counter or unattended check register, the items barcode is scanned along with the individual's phone. The transaction is done. The individual's phone is sent the receipt of the item they purchased.
Here is the real trick. The items barcode is recorded along with the transaction and is sent to a database. If the database was tied to the barcode of the item.... such as website domain with the same barcode, your could track the sales of all items with that code.
Advertisers, Marketers, Retailers as well as Manufacturers of these items pay big bucks to know who is buying their stuff. That information would be easy to capture.
Here is the real pain of the problem...You would have to deal with the likes of
IBM,
NCR,
Microsoft and
Unisys when getting into the POS systems. These guys like to own everything so they are not fun groups to work with and they would probably try to snatch your binary domains if you were successful. These companies are known for litigating patents and they have some in the POS Barcode arena.
Just a thought for you.