What do you do when you're desperate to be the number 1 supermarket in South Korea, but your stores are outnumbered by your main competitor? Bring the stores to the people! Subways became virtual stores for the Tesco Homeplus brand – walls were fitted out with pictures of store content where commuters could use their smartphones to shop.
The trick is the clever use of QR codes. Positioned beside product price points, these little codes are scannable using a smartphone and added to a virtual shopping cart. Once shoppers had finished, their purchases were delivered to their door soon after they got home. Online sales increased 130% as a result, and Homeplus became number 1 in the online market arena (and a very close 2nd offline).
The Green Room Verdict: Turning waiting time into shopping time was a great idea, and more than just a novelty – the target audience would have greatly appreciated a service like this. It's nice to see QR codes being put into good use, and we think that this kind of application could work in any large city. Besides, most phones these days are capable of barcode scanning software. Could this be the future of shopping? Could we one day see virtual stores in the form of posters on the street?
No comments:
Post a Comment