Tesco Home Plus Wants More Virtual Shopping Walls in South Korea

Perhaps every QR code aficionado and virtual shopping enthusiast is aware of Tesco South Korea’s efforts to gain more sales by coming up with a shopping wall in the country’s subway station. The wall featured photographs of grocery items arranged on a shelf. Each item has a corresponding QR code that busy commuters only need to scan in order to buy. Their purchases are then delivered to their doorsteps.

No crowds, no shopping carts and no lining up at the cash register. The idea was soon being copied and duplicated by other retail companies worldwide.

eBay used QR codes in their Inspiration Shop. Teaming up with artist and TV personality Jonathan Adler, the auction giant displayed Adler’s fashion picks and consumers could scan the QR codes next to these items to buy them on eBay.

Toys R’ Us put up their virtual stores on billboards all around New York and New Jersey.

John Lewis used a Waitrose retail branch to sell 96 of their best selling products via QR codes.

Even Singapore’s Cold Storage came up with its own subway supermarket.

Back to Tesco South Korea, the idea was such a success that the campaign earned it a place as one of Technorati’s Best QR Code Campaigns.

Is it any wonder that Tesco is extending this QR code effort? Tesco Home Plus is taking the Hangangjin subway experiment up and displaying the virtual shopping walls on twenty bus shelters all over the country. Consumers still have the option to download the Tesco Home Plus Smartphone App to scan the QR codes so that they could make their purchases. Aside from QR codes, UPC barcodes are also used for Tesco’s virtual shopping wall.

The app already has close to one million downloads since April 2011 and is regarded as the most popular shopping app in the country!

We are sure that there will be more copycats who will pop-up after this!