I wonder if there is a comparison between this form of online shopping vs. traditional online shopping via Freshdirect. Perhaps, the visual experience makes it more appealing and gives it the feel of real shopping as opposed to using a text search or link clicking.
While I've never used Freshdirect, I can't imagine it's quite as fast and easy to browse products there as it is to just visually scan across a huge wall of products. That's the advantage for the consumer.
The advantages are bigger for the seller. You don't have to rely on people remembering "Oh yes, I need to do some shopping" and going to your website. Instead they'll be walking through the subway station, remember "Oh yes, I need kim chee" and buy some. It's as good as having a store in the subway station, except that the store takes up no room and costs way less.
I can really see this store-on-a-wall thing taking off, and not just in Korea. If you can be the middleman who standardizes the protocol which lets anyone buy anything and get it delivered to their home, just by scanning a QR code, you'll make a lot of money.
"You don't have to rely on people remembering 'Oh yes, I need to do some shopping' and going to your website."
In that sense, the wall scanning is a bit of a gimmick; the critical thing is to remember you want/need to buy something.
FreshDirect, for example, does have an iphone app, but without the visual reminder, you may forget to order.
"If you can be the middleman who standardizes the protocol which lets anyone buy anything and get it delivered to their home, just by scanning a QR code, you'll make a lot of money."
That's an interesting idea: tie a QR reader app to someone's credit card or banks account on one end, and to an automated shopping cart on the other (assuming the QR links back to a specific product, of course).
In that sense, the wall scanning is a bit of a gimmick; the critical thing is to remember you want/need to buy something.
This is the big thing. I work for an online grocery shopping startup, and when speaking to lapsed customers the biggest answer we get as to why they've stopped shopping with us is that they forgot we exist and went to the supermarket instead. Breaking people's habits is a hugely difficult thing, but vital in a sector where most people's first thought is to go to drop into Tesco on the way home from work.
