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Grocery shopping via smartphone on South Korean subways

We’ve seen numerous innovations designed to make the chore of grocery shopping less painful for consumers, with Indian AaramShop’s use of Facebook being one recent example. Hoping to raise the level of convenience for time-strapped commuters in South Korea, Home plus — the Korean branch of Tesco PLC — recently launched a series of virtual stores on subway platforms, enabling customers to make purchases using their smartphones while they wait for a train.

The virtual stores, constructed from large backlit billboards, displayed images of all the items one would expect to find in a standard Home plus shop. QR codes were then placed next to the image of each product, enabling smartphone equipped commuters to automatically add the merchandise to their virtual basket by scanning the code. The total order was then delivered to the commuter’s door once they returned home from work. During the campaign Home plus online sales increased by 130%, with over 10,000 customers trying the stores. A video below explains the premise in more detail:

According to Home plus, Korea is the second hardest working country in the world, making the need for a convenience-focused solutions particularly pressing. Any idea that saves people time and effort however, is ripe for adaptation anywhere.

In: Esfera do Marketing

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Comment by Julien Diogo on July 9, 2011 at 5:21pm: Hello Mike. In fact I saw this example in Korea, and I've seen something somewhere in England, but I do not know about the example given ... I will see if I find somethingI agree with you more ... fouls on certain products ... As for substitutes I believe there is an application of warning when it is exhausted. Something that we agree to some,is the spectacle of the app, right?

Comment by Mike Lachapelle on July 8, 2011 at 5:09pm: I can certainly see this working in the area of packaged goods, but I am curious about the success in supplying goods where there is a qualitative component; i.e. fruits and vegtables, meat.

When one's choices are determined by the quality of the product, marbling in the red meat, freshness of the fruit, how succesful is this approach. Also the question remains about substitutions. If the product ordered is not available, how do they deal with this?

It seems to me I read something a while ago about Tesco's attempt in England with ordering and home delivery of groceries. The opinion questioned the success of the endeavour based on those two elements - quality and replacement. Do you know anything about the English pilot of the service? If it didn't go well, what is it about the Korean context that changes the game?