Imagine this: you’re on your way home from a stressful day at the office when you remember there’s nothing in the fridge for dinner. The last thing you want to do is spend your evening in the supermarket after a long train journey home. The solution? Virtual shopping and interactive touch screens. Aimed at the busy commuter lifestyle, online shopping has finally met reality with QR code shopping popping up at subway stations across the globe.
The concept is simple! Posters replicating supermarket shelves line the tunnels of a subway. Instead of buying physical products there and then, shoppers scan the QR codes on the ‘shelves’ using their smartphones, pay for their purchases online and the shopping is delivered to their home at a convenient time, from as little as a couple of hours.
This innovative concept came about in 2009 from an idea trialled by HomePlus, South Korea’s operation of British grocery giant Tesco. As the second biggest supermarket chain in the country, HomePlus were struggling to keep up with their biggest rival, E Mart. The problem was, E Mart outnumbered them massively on number of stores and so took up the largest portion of the market. HomePlus needed a way to increase the number of shoppers without increasing the number of stores and so, subway shopping was born. By April 2009, HomePlus had set up virtual supermarkets at some of Seoul’s busiest stations, revolutionising the way commuters lived their day-to-day lives with interactive touch screens.
The grocery shopping phenomenon hit western shores in 2012 when Chicago based online grocery company Peapod were inspired by the triumph in Seoul and brought subway shopping to 17 of the city’s busiest CTA and Metra stations. After this proved a roaring success, Peapod took QR grocery shopping Philadelphia in order to boost sales on the east coast, going on to open up virtual stores in over 100 stations across Boston, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Washington.
Virtual shopping is not just limited to grocery shopping, however. Last April, online Canadian brand Well.ca transformed Toronto’s busiest station, Union Station- which sees over 200,000 commuters every day- into a virtual health and beauty store for a month. Another benefit of QR shopping is that one space can be reconstructed into any store from month to month. By last winter, gone were the shelves stacked with toiletries and cosmetics and Union Station was transformed into a child’s dream when Walmart teamed up with Mattel to create a virtual toy shop ready for the busy holiday period.
As a retail design agency we love this idea and with HomePlus and Well.ca showing just how successful subway shopping can be, we look forward to seeing some home-grown companies like Tesco and Boots bringing virtual QR shopping to the London Underground. Perhaps interactive touch screen technology could add an interesting twist with in-store options being made available- all the fun of shopping without the burden of having to lug everything home afterwards!
