With conference calls and virtual offices it seems that there is no need for a real office anymore. But surely that cannot be the same for shopping… right?
Ocado is an online only grocery merchant, but by the end of August the business will have a high street presence in the One New Change shopping centre in London. However, it will not be a normal shop that resides in a commercial property like we see every day, instead the brand will display a ‘virtual shop window.’ The window will go live today (25 August) for one week only and will be available 24 hours a day. So how does it really work?
Customers will need to download the Ocado ‘On The Go’ shopping application available from The App Store or Android Marketplace. So unfortunately if you still have a Nokia 3310 this may not be for you. Once the application is installed, customers will be able to scan the barcodes of hundreds of products on the shop window. Products include anything from organic food to toilet rolls.
If the ‘virtual shop window’ is a success, the company hopes to repeat the initiative idea around the whole of the UK as Jason Gissing, Ocado’s co-founder expressed, “We’ll be looking at options around continuing this ‘virtual window shopping’ approach.”
Currently only 15 per cent of Ocado’s transactions are completed using a mobile phone, but they hope that this figure will increase after people have used the ‘virtual shop window’ application. But can a virtual shop outweigh a physical shop in a commercial property? We think not, as nothing compares to strolling around the shops and picking items up to have a closer look. Also not everyone owns a Smartphone or does their shopping on a mobile, so already the target market is limited.
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