The Moodies
Best Creativity and Innovation During COVID-19
Downtown Retail Winner
Lotte Duty Free – Smart Store
In times of crisis retailers have to get smart. And that is precisely what South Korea’s travel retail giant, and world number two, Lotte Duty Free, did in March 2020 with the launch of Smart Store, an innovative non-face-to-face shopping platform. The hi-tech zone is located on the first floor of its flagship Myeong-dong store in Seoul. The 520sq m Smart Store features a range of beauty products, including cosmetics, perfumes, and beauty devices. By applying digital technology to offline stores, the customer experience is enhanced, and face-to-face contact is minimised to create a fast and pleasant shopping environment without waiting. Customers visiting the Smart Store first scan the QR code installed at the store entrance with their smartphone, thus allowing them to access a dedicated mobile cart. When the customer sees a product they like, they scan the product-specific bar code to check product details, reviews, inventory quantities and other details and add it directly to their mobile cart. Once a customer is finished shopping, they simply show a QR code (unique to each transaction) and pay in a consolidated purchase.
The Smart Store technology caters for Korean and foreign customers. Mobile cart access QR codes can also be scanned with WeChat, China’s largest mobile messaging platform, and detailed product-specific information is available in four languages: Korean, English, Japanese and simplified Chinese. In July 2020, Lotte Duty Free changed the store’s old-school price tags to electronic shelf labels (ESL). These are easy and convenient to change and reusable. In October 2020, Lotte Duty Free partnered with Lancôme Travel Retail Asia Pacific in launching the brand’s first in-store implementation of the augmented reality makeup try-on service in travel retail, Modiface, in its Smart Store. This allows customers to try on beauty products via virtual mirror from an iPad or by scanning QR codes. Lotte Duty Free said: “Due to what the pandemic has brought to the world, it is now very important for brick-and-mortar stores to be as contactless as possible. Providing customers in-store experiences will still be crucial to retailers in the post-COVID era. When it comes to how they will engage with customers, how far they can be contactless or how much they can be digitalised will be the key. We have been investing heavily in making our Smart Store a more digitalised shopping space and have been also planning to open more other downtown stores at home and abroad.”
The Smart Store electronic price tags connect consumers to brand and product information
The Moodie Davitt eZine The Moodies 2021
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