Virtual Supermarket Allows South Koreans To Shop In Subways With Their Phones

Mega supermarket chain Tesco has designed a virtual supermarket in South Korea in hopes to gain more business than its competitor E-Mart. According to the video below, Koreans are the second-most hardworking people in the world and for them, grocery shopping once a week is a dreaded task. So, Tesco Homeplus created a virtual store in Seoul subway stations in which the displays and merchandise are exactly the same as the stores. Customers scan the desired product with their smartphone and it then appears in their online cart. The products will be delivered to their door "right after you get home."

QR Code, created by Toyota in the mid 1990s, is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. In South Korea, Tesco, in an effort to increase its market share in one of busiest countries in the world, is adopting QR code to enable shoppers to do their weekly shopping in virtual stores whilst waiting for the subway! In underground stations, Tesco erected a network of virtual shops called Home Plus. The shopping isles look just like real shopping isles in a real store. But instead of throwing wanted items into a shopping trolley, users simply scan the QR code from their phones, and their shopping is delivered to their homes right after they arrived home. Tesco decided creating virtual stores would be a much more cost-effective way to increase sales versus spending money to open new shops. So far, the new development has proven to be a good idea. According to the Telegraph, Tescos sales have increased 130 percent in the last three months. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/south-korea-virtual-supermarket_n_885150.html http://www.vr-news.com/?p=3043