Virtual walls - the next big thing?

Inevitably – and as it often does – it all started with Tesco. Or, as they’re known in South Korea: Home plus.

As the now-famous YouTube video tells us, Tesco found that they were second in the South Korean market, partly due to the lower number of stores they had in comparison to their main competitor. Their mission was to explore whether they could become number one in the market, without increasing store numbers – namely, via their online store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVoYsBym88

They produced a wall that people could shop whilst on-the-go, somewhere they could utilize the spare minutes spent waiting for public transport to shop for products using their smart phones and QR codes. This allowed consumers to cut out the need to go to a store itself, saving time and – in the words of Tesco – allowing people to “relax more.” The supermarket claims that people would receive the goods they’d selected that evening – a huge operational achievement.

To aid familiarity, the virtual shopping wall was laid out in a style that imitated the layout of a normal Home plus store, so customers already knew how to shop it.

Sales increased ‘tremendously’. During this campaign (implying it was a temporary trial) 10,287 customers visited the online Home plus mall via their smart phones, the number of new registered users rose by 76% and online sales increased by 130%. A success, indeed, but could this success be sustained, or was it a novelty effect and the work of great PR?

The first to trial the concept in the UK was Ocado, who created a temporary pop-up store in London’s One New Change for a week or so in September.

Using the same technology – smart phones and QR codes, customers could shop for the products displayed. Unlike Tesco, the products weren’t reproduced as if they were ‘on shelf’, but more like individual ‘key purchase’ items.

The latest to try this phenomenon is Ebay, who have opened a pop up shop off Oxford Street for the duration of this week. This is the second instance of them going ‘offline’ – having already done a similar event in New York earlier this year.

In the London ‘store’ they have set up a series of different rooms for different members of the family, filled with objects and gifts to suit their tastes – each of which has a QR code attached. It’s an interesting idea but begs the question – why would I come to a shop to try out products, scan in a QR code and go through the difficulty of buying it via my phone and then have to arrange for it to be delivered, when I could just go to a shop to buy it and take it away there and then?

The Ebay effort will certainly have drummed up some good PR at a very important time of year for the company as it engages and online community, offline, but whether it’s a serious attempt to go from clicks to bricks is unlikely.

The virtual shopping wall seems to be a viable option (with Tesco citing notable success from their trial and with copycats springing up) – but is this a mere flash in the pan with other companies jumping on the bandwagon or a true indication of The Future – something with staying power?