Virtual Grocery Stores Hit S. Korean Subways

Smart Shopping: S. Korean commuters use subway transit time to do virtual grocery shopping for same-day delivery.

South Korean supermarket chain Home Plus is letting commuters make use of transit time by covering subway walls with images of groceries. A mobile phone app lets commuters order groceries simply by snapping photos of the desired items. By the time they get home that day, the items will be delivered to their doorsteps.

Tesco’s Home Plus virtual store pairs each image of a grocery item with a quick-response (QR) code, a boxy geometric image that encodes product ID and price. Each scanned code sends the item into an online shopping cart. Customers pay with their phones as they board their trains to work. Home Plus has already sold the service to 10,000 customers and is seeing a 130 percent jump in online sales.

Some U.S. firms are also using location-based smart-phone advertising and indoor positioning technology to link shoppers with special offers to products and services. Combined with software for paying by smart phone, they can deliver a complete virtual shopping experience exactly when and where most convenient for consumers.

As of 2008 only 0.2 percent of the food and beverage industry’s sales were made online, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Home Plus’s success could lead to a significant advance in the way retailers think about creating more cost- and time-efficient ways to engage consumers while lowering the high cost of maintaining fully staffed big-box stores.