Putting Digital in Perspective

 In CustomerThink: 

" ... This year, the number of smartphones, tablets and connected devices is expected to cross 7 billion – that will mean more connected devices than there are human beings on earth. With more and more people owning smart gadgets, these devices are going to have an increasingly bigger influence on our communication patterns, online habits and of course, our buying habits, and globally, organisations are trying hard to keep up with this shift by leveraging Digital Business Technology themselves. ... 

Consider what Tesco did in Korea around four years ago. In 2011, Tesco’s affiliate, Homeplus in South Korea, had to deal with a strange situation in order to meet its aspiration of market leadership: While it was a problem that Homeplus did not have enough stores as its main competitor did, the real problem though seemed to be the very lifestyle of their potential customers – given that Koreans were extremely hardworking, they just didn’t have enough time to go shopping. So even if Homeplus was to set up enough stores, it was going to be a challenge to get people to visit the store. ... 

The killer plan Homeplus came up with was to set up virtual grocery stores in strategic locations like subways and metro stations – they erected posters of products and groceries just like they were displayed at their stores – each item displayed in the poster came with a QR Code that provided product details such as pricing, etc, and could be scanned from an app on a smartphone into a virtual shopping cart. What’s more, the delivery of their checked-out items could be timed conveniently. Customers could now use their smartphones to buy grocery as they waited for their trains or whenever they found time as they commuted."