The distinction between bricks-and-mortar and online shopping is blurring, and digital out-of-home has a role to play in the middle ground, says Nick Gale, head of new media for POPAI UK & Ireland.

Whether it provides a definitive insight into the future or not, there is no arguing that the Virtual Subway Store innovation from Tesco Homeplus in South Korea is a clear sign that traditional boundaries in retail marketing are shifting, fast.

Enabling shoppers to take a snapshot of products on wall graphics and use QR technology on their smartphones to add chosen items automatically to their online baskets for home delivery, it lets consumers turn waiting into shopping, without ever having to enter a store.

And this is surely only the start of the convergence of traditional retail and digital platforms.

For so long, the wider point-of-purchase (POP) industry has focused on the last three feet of the sale. But now retailers and brands must imagine a world where shoppers can virtually shop, in the real world.

The shopper is no longer defined solely by the physical constraints of a store’s four walls. As the growing uptake of smartphones among shoppers continues, they will increasingly be able to use technology to shop on the move. This will require previous thinking and technologies to be re-conceptualised, as associated technologies – such as social media in retail, QR codes and mobile Web retail apps – become more prevalent.

The theme has been particularly evident during the judging of this year’s POPAI Awards, where the number of entries featuring digital integration into “traditional” PoP categories – such as the Phones4u Demo Hub, which is in the process of being rolled out to 400 stores – has totalled more than those entered into the categories for dedicated digital media in retail.

It is proof, if proof were needed, that the traditional retail landscape is beginning to evolve in a very different way to that which we imagined only a few years ago.

www.popaidigital.com

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