I spent my summer back in China this year. And I found something really interesting in the subway. An online mass merchant retail company named Yihaodian had a campaign in the subway station with an idea that can make your life easier— virtual supermarket.
In case that you haven’t heard of virtual supermarket, let me ask you some questions. Are you tired of going to grocery shopping once a week during your busy schedule? If your answer is positive, well, let me introduce you a brilliant idea of using virtual supermarket.
Tesco wanted to adjust their marketing plan in order to appeal customers in South Korea market. They changed their name into Homeplus. And Homeplus designed a new campaign by launching their virtual subway store in South Korea. 
Their idea was “Let the store come to the people” and created virtual stores that wanting to permeate customers’ daily lives. Their first trial is subway stations by putting the posters which showing the display as same as the real stores. And you use your Smartphone to shop. Just simply scan the QR Code from the pictures and it will go to your online cart automatically. The most awesome thing is after you finished your purchasing; your goods will be delivered to your door after you get home. In terms of the feedbacks, people love the experience of this new way of ecommerce and commented that it is exactly like shopping in the actual store. In the meantime, Tesco’s idea might change people’s waiting time for subway into shopping time. For the result, online sales increased dramatically as 130% for Homeplus, as well as the new registered members rose by 76%. In order to be more competitive in the industry, through this campaign Homeplus had became the No.1 in online market and was a very close 2nd offline after the No.1 company E-mart in Korea. Recently, Walmart finally has received conditional approval for a controlling share in the ecommerce site from Chinese government and hoping to match the increasing needs of Chinese online users.
I believe this is a wonderful e-marketing strategy for organizations nowadays because of the increasing number of Smartphone users across the world.
Here is a video from Youtube to explain what is Virtual Supermarket:
Have a look at this new one from Yihaodian in China
http://www.psfk.com/2012/10/china-virtual-grocery-stores.html
Thank you so much for the link. It is really interesting to know this. 🙂
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Hey~Thank you for your interest and kind comment. I am glad you like it. 🙂 And HyperCity is a quite interesting shopping site as well~
Thanks for sharing the wonderful post . Waiting for new updates and posts.