What could possibly go wrong?
"Please deliver this in two weeks time as I'm off on holiday and my house will be empty until then."
UK grocery giant Tesco has devised a new way to ensure people don't actually have to enter its many stores – by setting up a glowing virtual shop slab at the airport. Woman uses Tesco virtual shop Customers making their way through London Gatwick's Airport can now distract themselves from bickering and boozy fellow …
That would make sense if:
1) You were required to inform Tesco of your planned activities in between your order date and delivery date.
2) Tesco were known for opportunistic burglary.
I admit that it's asking for trouble to announce on Facebook that you will be out of the country for 2 weeks leaving your home unattended but shopping online at Tesco is hardly the same.
Too bloody right, no doubt she has an hour wait regardless of which way she is going (boarding time, waiting for staff to steal your luggage)
If it's advertising and they are promoting there specials then doesn't it actually defeat the point of specials as the shop'ee is no longer going into the shop to buy over priced tat by mistake... Who get's off the plain and goes, "OMFGpop we need to get pickle as we have none at home Lolcats!?!?!"??? Who are these people????
Try surfing the web with your iPhone or other smart phone.
Its a pain in the ass.
Why the thumbs up?
Simple.
Its a fairly cheap way to get some potential customers. For the cost of a relatively small kiosk, you serve two purposes.
1) Its advertising.
2) Its an additional point of capture of new orders.
You're killing two birds with 1 stone.
You've got to admit its pretty brilliant when you consider its functional advertising.
It looks like they've allocated the same amount of space for each product regardless of size, probably to have a nice clean layout (or because their devs are lazy). Hence there's only one each of the larger items, but multiples of the smaller ones to fill up the space.
I expect some UX guru told them it looked more like a supermarket shelf that way, and took home six figures for the insight.
"gregory my daughter needs another pony, are you quite sure the dairy farmers are dying?"
call me G sir, yes quite sure sir
"well get the money from someone else, who's next on the suckers list? ah.... airport users"
Tesco at Gatwick Airport may not be the first virtual grocery store in the UK – Waitrose and others have already dabbled with differing levels of success – but it is certainly one of the more high profile.
From a user perspective, why shouldn’t it work? After all, while you’ve nothing better to do waiting for your flight, why not solve the age-old problem of having no fresh bread and milk when you get home after a long and tiring journey back. It’s quick, simple and uses technology that’s second nature to most of us.
By bringing together retail and bring your own device (BYOD) technologies, the retailer too avoids many traditional in-store costs, as the customer’s smartphone acts as a fast checkout device, EPOS solution and trolley collection agent. All in all, by putting the store where you are, as a more convenient form of online shopping it looks a winner.
So does this signal the end of retail as we know it? I don’t think so. Manchester’s Arndale and Stratford’s Westfield won’t be shutting up shop just yet, as consumers of all ages continue to prefer the impulsive touchy-feely in-store experience for many of their purchases. Equally, retail chains won’t be rushing to throw away huge levels of infrastructure investment.
But could it happen? Certainly from an IT perspective, pushing the reliance on robust technologies from today’s checkout to a web server further back up the distribution chain should not prove an insurmountable hurdle. And when shopping is a chore, it will appeal to customers too.
So, in years to come, you may well be able to buy groceries at the bus stop or railway station as well as the airport. But for those already writing the high street’s obituary, just remember: convenience isn’t the only attribute on the consumer’s shopping list.
- Richard Olds, CEO, Vista Support
"From a user perspective, why shouldn’t it work?"
Are you aware how terrible Tesco are at security? How Stupid they are, arguing that they know what they're doing when clearly they don't? How poor they are at protecting their customers information?
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/07/lessons-in-website-security-anti.html
Also, read (and understand) the comments section.