Now this I would say is technology at its best. “Yihaodian” which is a top grocery e-commerce business in China has take the marketing warfare to a different tangent to win over shoppers from competitors . Believe it or not, they have teamed up with Ogilvy and Mather China and opened 1000 stores in a flash.
Watch this video to get an idea of this concept.
It is interesting to note that these stores are not the physical brick and stick stores but purely virtual 3D outlets where shoppers can take a trip to a shop and do their purchase through a smart phone store app. Nevertheless, they have to be present at any of the 1000 spots. Shoppers can simply do their shopping as well as checkout and the items will be delivered at their preferred place. It is in fact similar to shopping at a conventional store where you can get into a shop, look through the aisle and do your shopping. It is the customers’ smart phone camera and the technology which brings the shops to being real. The uniqueness of this concept is that it brings online shopping to offline world when most of the offline businesses are making plans to go the opposite way.
Source: http://www.wpp.com