Korea’s Tesco reinvents grocery shopping with QR-code “stores”

Tesco (which is actually a British chain that operates in Korea rather than a Korean chain) has been leading online grocery shopping for a long time. It first offered Videotex Teleshopping in 1984 and was the first to offer internet shopping in 1996.<p>It's online store Tesco.com is the largest online grocery store in the world (largely driven by the fact that online grocery shopping is much more mainstream in the UK compared to most other markets)<p>They're trialling a lot of interesting tech at the moment (API, in-store GPS for finding products, etc.). One of their major competitors Ocado makes 10% of their income through iPhone "scan-and-shop" orders so it's definitely a huge market.

This is FAKE!<p><a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/489884.html" rel="nofollow">http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/48...</a> [updated with English article]<p>But it's a really cool, fun idea :) grocery shopping while waiting for the subway. It's one of the coolest concepts for a subway ad I've seen.

A more advanced version would look like this: Tesco would install digital walls/displays all over the city (country) and control all the displays remotely. The city would earn nice money from renting the display space to Tesco.

Perhaps one of the best ideas I've ever seen in action. A much better "browsing" (in the shopping sense of browsing) experience than just flipping through a list of items on your phone.<p>The best part is that it gets delivered to your home. So you can literally shop while waiting for the next train, and there's a good chance the groceries will arrive not too long after you get home.

I don't see why they need to use the trick with the walls at all. Why can't the consumers do online shopping from their smartphones directly?

Much of the shopping experience could be replicated online if people used large enough photos. The postage stamp sized photos that many sites use are really stupid. So if you're building an online shopping site give me big juicy full screen photos.

I think it would be a real cool concept if I could upload my list ahead of time or have my groceries retrieved from a conveyer belt at the market that's automatically retrieved similar to how Amazon's automated distribution systems work. Of course, I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap or practical for actual use.

1. Very tired of seeing this float around. I expect more from HN. (Here come the downvotes. So be it.)<p>2. This is a terrible, terrible idea. If you've got a smartphone, you'd just shop online. Maybe while you're riding the train.<p>3. It's fake? That would make so much more sense.

I'm assuming Koreans have a technology friendly subway since doing this on the London Underground wouldnt really work since you dont get a signal, nor is there wifi or anything.

I like how they respect their competition, unlike in the software world where everybody is throwing rotten eggs at everybody.

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.