Express delivery: How you can buy your groceries from a virtual supermarket... on a train platform

• Posters of supermarket shelves stacked with goods pasted on platform walls
• Point your smartphone at the code of the item you want to buy
• Goods are then delivered to your home address
  

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 11:16 AM on 1st August 2011

Commuters could soon be able to do their shopping on the way to work while waiting for a train on a station platform.

A 'virtual supermarket' consisting of posters of shelves stocked with goods pasted on platform walls is set to be introduced at London Underground stations.

Passengers 'shop' by scanning QR - Quick Response - codes of the items they want to buy using their smartphones. These goods are later delivered to their home address.

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Tempting: A 'virtual supermarket' consisting of posters of shelves stocked with goods pasted on platform walls is used by smartphone-wielding commuters at a Seoul subway station - and is set to be introduced on the London Underground

Supermarket giant Tesco successfully trialled the hi-tech store in a South Korean subway station and there are now plans to bring the concept to Britain.

Irene Lam, spokeswoman for Cheil Worldwide, the global marketing agency that helped develop the store, said: 'In Seoul, everyone is glued to their smartphones.

'Online shopping is a given and everyone is extremely busy, working very long hours. So this concept absolutely made sense.'

Last month, Tesco's Korean arm Home Plus transformed Seoul's Hangangjin Station into a 'virtual supermarket' by pasting posters of stocked shelves onto platform walls.

The trial boosted the retailer's online sales by 130 per cent and online members by 76 per cent, claimed Cheil.

Trade magazine The Grocer reported that the trial was so successful that it is now being extended to other Seoul subway stations next month, with a view to rolling the format out across South Korea within two years.

Future of shopping? Supermarket giant Tesco successfully trialled the hi-tech system in Seoul

And now the futuristic shopping experience is coming to Britain, according to experts.

'The time is absolutely right for this in the UK,' said Simon Goodall, director of strategy at Saatchi & Saatchi X.

'This isn't about specific places - subway stations or whatever. This is about bringing the store to the people if the people won't come to the store.

'It will be down to individual retailers to think about how this can work for their brands.'

The Grocer magazine said that the beauty of virtual, as opposed to online, stores is that they don't completely do away with the physical experience of shopping - something that consumers still want, according to the results of a poll of 2,000 shoppers published by advertising agency Leo Burnett.

Of those surveyed, 59 per cent rated their experience in physical stores as either dramatically or somewhat better than their experience online.

The Grocer said: 'If it takes off - and given its "best of both worlds" blend of the online and bricks-and-mortar shopping experience, there is every reason to think it will - it will revolutionise the way we shop.'

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