Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 97
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
Welcome to the South Korea Edition!
This week, a few of my observations from South Korea. I did not made many pictures or videos from Gangnam, where all the expensive high end stores are, the Ginza of Korea if you will, but instead I chose for more different kind of retail environments, smaller ones and the integration between on and offline. Hope you like it! Thank you for reading, liking and subscribing.
🇰🇷 South Korea’s unstaffed stores: a reality western Europe can’t imagine
I was walking a bit in Seoul, just browsing through some stores, and I noticed quite a few of them were unstaffed. Usually, they have a doorbell-like device at the entrance. During the daytime, it’s open — I think at night you can enter with a bank card or something like that. Once you’re inside, like in the store from the video, you can shop as normal, try on clothes, use a fitting room, etc. There’s just zero (yeah, ZERO) staff. Of course there are video cameras recording. Nevertheless South Korea is a high trust society, you can see that everywhere.
From what I’ve read, there are about 4 to 5 thousand unstaffed stores in Seoul alone. Wow! This would never be possible in Western Europe.
🇰🇷 UX at terminals in South Korea, many many clicks and modals
I noticed UX in South Korean (POS) terminals (and I used them a lot during this holiday, from ATM machines, to the WOW pass machines and some apps, they all seem to have in common that they ask for redundant user input and/or extra confirmation for almost every step. So I dug in a little bit, because it is contrary to neighboring Japan and that surprised me.
It seems so that (traditionally) South Koreans are into risk minimization, where manual confirmation is preferred over automation unless it's 100% reliable.
It’s difficult to explain in text, you have to see it and experience it to understand it.
I also have to emphasize that I think this is also changing because when you use hyper ultra modern apps like “Naver” this issue does not really exists. I think we can learn a lot from Naver’s UX for example (more on Naver next week). But I noticed this constantly asking for user input, at many UX interaction points also beyond legacy banking systems.
Wonderful source of cross cultural UX also on South Korea although it does not align 100% with my observations :)
https://blog.kristi.digital/p/designers-coffee-western-vs-asian-ux-insights
Sweden vs Korea in UX: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1879073/FULLTEXT01.pdf
🇰🇷 A shop dedicated to towels in Seoel
Imagine you are a fan of towels. Wouldn’t it be great if there is the most ultimate towel store you can imagine? Well I found it! almost every product in this store were towels. The whole store is super “instagrammable,” just like many other shops and cafes here. They even encourage it, by the sign on the door telling you, you can shoot videos here. That’s so contrary to shops in the West that often discourage to record videos in instagrammable shops. I made a short video of the place. Funny thing: they even have a cable car with towels moving through the store and even the elevator is instagrammable.
🫒Olive Young: global branding, conversion, experience, omnichannel
Normally I would not go into such a store but I promised someone to bring back some of the famous Korean Skincare Masks. So here I went into the most famous skincare store of Korea: “Olive Young”. I took a few pictures but the one I share here I liked personally the most because it’s again a nice on to offline integration. They show their best selling products per month from their global website and app. That’s social proof (loved by fans worldwide) & urgency trigger : “On Sale”. Well done! It’s also a reason to come back every month. It would have been ideally if they also showed this on their website, but there I could not find this selection easily. I also think this is a great opportunity to brand their global website to potential online customers abroad, they ship almost worldwide, so any tourist will recognize this and probably buy again from home when they are satisfied.
Global website olive young: https://global.oliveyoung.com
🤩WOW Pass: on and offline integrated tourist experience
When you travel to South Korea, you really need the “WOW pass”. I can explain here what it is, but others have done a far better job in that, so I can better share their video. Basically it’s a tourist card with app integration and that latter part, that’s new, I haven’t seen that integration in any other country. The only country that comes close, is China with it’s tourist Alipay system, but that’s a slightly different way of working.
I travel quite a lot but I never saw a physical “tourist card” integrated with an app. So kudo’s for that idea! It really helps with the travel experience to South Korea and an example for other countries or cities!
Having said that, there is always room for some improvements. I cannot write too much on it, there is a length limitation on newsletters, but I wrote some struggles and compliments:
They have an integrated food delivery service. Great idea it helps you with the -often- blocking payment issue when ordering food via apps abroad.
Their booths stand out in design, you can’t miss them, they have an integrated phone on the side to ask for help and very clear instructions if you get stuck.
They really have fast and extensive service both via in app chat and booth.
You can easily convert local currency into Kwong and put it on your card.
Instant notification after you have paid somewhere, converted in my own currency, gives comfort I didn’t pay too much.
Some improvements/observations:
The payment system to top up via your phone does not work, at least not with VISA and AMEX. Tried multiple times. When asking via chat, they said VISA does not work: well then: do not show it, because you do get the option. Even better connect Stripe, it’s global, it has so many local payment options integrated!
You can activate “vouchers” in the app and get immediate cashback when you buy something in a store. I tried it at an Olive Young physical store, I got error messages when doing so. I decided to leave it, but when I walked away and checked the app I did see the cashback. Seems good to follow the complete journey’s from a tourist perspective regularly for the WOW app PM’s.
A good thing would be if you can convert the money you have left, to crypto/stable coins/BTC and then transfer it to your own ledger.
It’s a bit strange you cannot get a refund of the remaining amount on exit points like airports, you have to extract that inside the city.
It would help if at the coupon pages you can just “1 click” to Naver or Kakao Maps for the nearest location of that particular store.
When I wanted to check my t-money balance I got a modal that I could not top up, because I do not have a Samsung Phone, wrong modal I think.
When I went to a CU store to top up money, I thought they would top up the payment amount (so the debit card part) but instead they topped up Tmoney (Transport part), a bit confusing. Making a point that it should all be integrated transport and payment. Much easier then the seperate cards.
See my earlier topic in this newsletter of unneeded screens in UX. The WOW booth also has i.m.o. too many screens/options before you get to your goal, you have to confirm many times. Can be smoother from a Western tourist perspective.
I wasn’t targeted online before my trip at all with ads/information, which could have been very possible. So many opportunities for extra sales & better Korea experiences for WOW pass.
First time I used the WOW booth or tried to use it, I was confused, I left the booth again, because all I wanted to do was to top up. The first screen does not indicated that (looks like you want to buy a card), and the second one also not.
Tip1: first screen clearly indicate: Top Up WOW pass
Tip2: second screen: make “Top Up” a clickable element (but better skip the step it if you use Tip 1)
Tip3: I think some user research with tourists from different countries will help improve the UX! I offer to help 😉 Many ideas!
Check it out here: https://www.wowpass.io/en
❤️Cute photobooth I saw in some stores: get a picture with your just purchased product
This is a cute machine don’t you think? I saw it at several stores. I couldn’t get it to work, but later I figured it out. The machine allows customers to take a free photo if they purchase a specific product. So you buy a product you get a QR code and you can print a picture with this product via the machine. This aligns perfectly well with the many many many self service photo booth stores you see here everywhere and seem to be very popular.
🌴Open rest areas some also for commercial activities
This I also liked, I saw this quite a lot. Areas where you can relax at communal spaces but also in or near retail spaces. One picture is from a subway station, where appearantly you can also do “flea market” activities. The other one is in front of a pop up store. Great ideas!
📱Musinsa: app download & review encouragement
Musinsa is a South Korean brand although it means a man with no brand referencing street fashion enthusiasts who didn't wear mainstream brands. I visited their Gangnam store and I want to share these promotions you see in the picture (I used ChatGPT and Google Lens to translate).
I guess the have global ambitions, as they target foreigners for app downloads with a direct discount after downloading the app. But more interesting is the right one. They call it “review event”. When you leave a review on the spot and show it to the cashier, you get a gift (either socks or a gift box), alternatively if you do it later you get double loyalty points.
Details : https://global.musinsa.com/us/main
That’s it for this more or less special Korea edition. Thank you so much for reading, liking and subscribing!
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