Shopping online has entered a new dimension and taken to the street. With the pace of life already rampant in big cities and people’s time extremely limited, a new approach has been introduced to city life:
Virtual display panels, equipped with product pics and scan codes. All we have to do is download the relevant phone application, choose a product, scan the code with our phone device, and presto, the item’s been charged to our accounts. When finished and checked out, an order is shot through the web and a delivery service has the items dropped at the assigned address.
The initiative has been introduced in South Korea by Tesco [Home Plus], as the corporate PR video below shows. Tesco brings the store to the people, turning waiting time into shopping time, making people’s lives easier and more efficient.
It also turns walls normally filled with flashy ad campaigns, such as the ones you usually encounter in subways, into interactive ones. Why simply advertise a product if you can also make a sale on it, on the spot?
It sounds like a shameless piece of consumerism, and it is. But it’s also a superb way of transforming time spent waiting in between places to ‘time spent doing something productive.’
Some people argue against this form of virtual shopping, saying it removes one’s joy of smelling and interacting with groceries. Others say that it’s a time-saver.
Whatever the case, the option is there. Whether this is one step closer to a robotized existence, where people are constantly targeted by companies that sell consumer goods to human drones, or whether it offers a window of opportunity to hard-working, time-squeezed individuals remains to be seen. For now the technology has caught up with the times, offering a way for people to get some of their chores done during an otherwise empty and stressful time in a hectic and stressful environment. Subway commuting in South Korea will never be the same again – and neither will advertising…