Sunday, October 23, 2011

South Korea's Practical Grocery

Online selling is nothing new, notably in plugged-in South Korea. But a firm says it's going further. It's contrast out a practical supermarket in a open place.

At Seolleung subterraneous hire in Seoul, there's a quarrel of brightly illuminated billboards along the platform, with hundreds of cinema of food and splash - all from fruit and divert to present noodles and house pet food.

Standing on the platform, a human in his 60s who gives his name as Mr Bae, says it looks to him similar to an public notice for a ease of use store.

When we notify it's a practical supermarket that you access with your smartphone, he doesn't appear impressed. He says he doesn't have a smartphone, so it's not for him. But he says, it's a great thought for younger Koreans.

And that's who this practical supermarket is essentially written for, according to Homeplus, the South Korean associate of the British supermarket sequence Tesco.

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that the number of smartphone subscribers in South Korea had transfered 10 million, up from only a couple of hundred thousand in 2009.

That might be because Homeplus's plan co-ordinator, Jo Hyun Jae, is sounding so confident.

He says young Koreans increasingly rest on smartphones to take caring of many of their every day tasks.

"Our customers are unequivocally active and many do not have the time to go to the supermarket to do their shopping," he says. "So the practical store allows them to save time."

Kim Yoona, 25, volunteers to give the practical supermarket a try.

After downloading the Homeplus app to her smartphone, Kim stands on the platform, checking out what's on offer.

She has more than 500 of the company's many renouned grocery products to select from.

"I'm considering of buying the Maxin Mocha Gold Might, an present coffee mix," she says. "They have one, two, three, four, five, 6 kinds of coffee blend lines. Because Maxin is my favourite, we will purchase this."

Kim binds her phone over the black-and-white QR - the Quick Response ethics - only beneath the photo of the coffee.

There's a beep, and the photo of the coffee appears on her phone screen.

She selects what bag size she wants, then the app asks her to come in when and where she'd similar to the product delivered.

If orders are placed before 13:00, the firm pledges to broach the groceries the same evening.

Homeplus's Jo Hyun Jae mentioned there are skeleton to put practical stores in other subterraneous railway stations, notably those shut to the city's universities.

And the firm wants to introduce them in other countries too, he says.

"We regard this process can work outward of Korea, given many young people around the world are taking advantage of smartphone technology."

But Kwon Ki-Duk, at the Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul, says there are aspects of local consumer enlightenment that make technology similar to the practical grocery more expected to take off in South Korea than elsewhere.

She points out that Koreans are very rapid to adjust to new technology products.

"Koreans are unequivocally meddlesome in concentration and cramming many not similar functions in to a singular gadget, and blending technologies, to be able to find novel ways to total common tasks," she says.

But, says Kwon, South Koreans are not ready to desert today's supermarkets - not nonetheless at least.

The nation is important for its long working hours and difficult work culture. Going shopping, she says, is a way for people to relax when they are not working.

She includes herself in that group.

After perplexing out the practical store, Kim Yoona agrees that for her, it does not nonetheless reinstate a earthy supermarket.

That is because she likes to see and hold things before she buys them.

"When we go to the actual store, we can examine the high quality of the vegetables or fruits," she says.

There doesn't appear to be a smartphone app that can do that.

Not yet, anyway.

Additional stating by Rob Hugh-Jones.

You can listen to a air wave chronicle of this square at PRI's The World , a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International, and WGBH in Boston. The air wave inform was initial announce on October 6, 2011.

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