SOUTH KOREA. Lotte Duty Free, the country’s largest travel retailer and world number two, has taken the next steps to develop its ‘Smart Store’, a hi-tech zone on the first floor of its flagship Myeong-dong store in Seoul. The Smart Store concept was introduced in March and Lotte has committed to expanding the concept to other locations within Korea and overseas.
As reported, the Smart Store aims to minimise face-to-face contact and to offer a fast and comfortable shopping environment. Lotte Duty Free’s 520sq m Smart Store features a range of beauty products, including cosmetics, perfumes, and beauty devices.
In this second phase, the retailer has replaced all existing acrylic price tags with electronic price tags (ESLs). The electronic tags not only display prices, they house a QR code that contains product information, allowing customers to find out more about the brands and products instantly via their mobile phones.
In the first phase, customers visiting the Smart Store 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.
Later this year, the third phase of the Smart Store will be introduced with automatic product recognition technology and in-store location tracking, paving the way for unmanned payment in-store.
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.
Lotte Duty Free said it is now planning to expand its Smart Store to other domestic and overseas shops after testing new digital technology in the flagship store environment.
The company said it “is rapidly promoting the introduction of digital transformation technology in preparation for the post-coronavirus period.”
Lotte Duty Free CEO Kap Lee said: “Digital advancement has become a necessity rather than a choice for the duty free industry.”
| Lotte’s leadership in digital technology The Smart Store builds on Lotte Duty Free’s impressive track record in digital innovation. As reported last May, the company introduced travel retail’s first electronic payment method, LDF Pay. It also introduced the ‘Kakao Easy Subscription Service’, which allows customers using the popular messaging platform to sign up by scanning a QR code in-store. Lotte Duty Free also embraced China’s largest payment service platform to introduce Alipay Smile to Pay, a recognition payment system, last October.  The retailer has also led the evolution of the travel retail shopping environment by introducing various services that combine cutting-edge technologies. A notable example is L’Oréal’s virtual makeup service ModiFace, a new augmented reality try-on makeup service launched last December with L’Oréal Travel Retail Asia Pacific. At the time, the partners said it was the first online make-up try-on experience of its kind in Asia Pacific travel retail. 
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