Hello, fellow members. It seems it was just yesterday I wrote my first column this summer, but winter is here, and I greet you with my last column. I don't feel too sad celebrating the year-end as this year was an eventful year, but how about you? There is some welcoming news regarding vaccine, so let's hang in there a bit more.

In my previous column, I explained that today's offline retail is facing a turning point due to changes in customer and development of technologies and that future retail will unfold into omni-channels where customers experience will occur on both online and offline channels. Do you remember? In my last column today, I'd like to introduce what many of you wanted to learn more about – the future offline stores represented as omni-channels and the customer experience at those stores.

As I have emphasized in my column, today's retail market is at a 'multi-channel' phase where customers can choose wisely between online and offline channels. In other words, they can choose offline stores when they need a product immediately or wait two days for delivery but with a price benefit by shopping online. However, this does not mean that customers are happy with the current multi-channel environment. In fact, it has become cumbersome to choose products moving from channel to channel compared to the days of single-channel shopping. Customers want to enjoy the advantages of both channels without the inconvenience of comparing and choosing between the two.

The most famous example of an omni-channel experiment for customers who seek maximized benefits of both online and offline channels in one single shopping experience is probably Amazon's food store, 'Amazon GO'. Here, customers can experience the new world of 'No Lines, No Checkout' where they don't have to wait in line to make payment.

However, according to a survey, customers' evaluation of Amazon GO is not all positive. They are happy with the convenience of not having to wait in line, but many responded that they are not happy about the quality of the products and customer service (Source: Mystery Shopping Amazon Go, 2018, Field Agent). It seems that automated payment experience alone does not make up a satisfying shopping experience because customers want to reap the benefits of both online and offline channels.

Then, what does a more evolved, future omni-channel that offers the benefits of both online and offline channels look like? I think we can catch a glimpse into that in China, which has achieved the fastest digital transformation on earth.

Fresh Hippo is Alibaba's fresh foods store that pursues a 'new distribution'. New distribution is similar concept to omni-channel. Fresh Hippo is considered the current best omni-channel store, providing a further evolved customer experience based on data by adding 'Retail Tech' such as big data, AI, IoT, and robotics to offline stores.

There are already many offline stores where you can conveniently place your order at a kiosk in Korea as well. However, it is difficult to say that offline stores in Korea have developed to the level of technology that improves consumers' convenience except for a few unmanned related technologies we frequently experience that are introduced to reduce labor costs. On the other hand, China's Fresh Hippo is changing consumer lifestyle by leveraging technology in making offline store experience more convenient, fast, and fun.

Fresh Hippo has a supermarket section where consumers can buy produce and a restaurant section where they can have what they bought cooked. First, customers enter the supermarket filled with fresh foods from around the world much like the food section at a department store. There are no staff in sight, but customers can use their smartphones to check information such as country of origin and the date the meat was processed along with the reviews of previous customers through the QR code on the product. They then pay for the product without staff checkout. If they want, they can have the items delivered to their homes or vice versa – they can place their order at the convenience of their homes. Prices are same online and offline and regardless of how customers place their order, they can have their items delivered within 30 minutes for distances less than 3km.

If a customer wishes to eat at the restaurant after buying products at the supermarket, he or she can choose how to cook the food at a kiosk and place an order. A paper-made menu is not required. The ingredients customers bought are moved to the restaurant's kitchen automatically through a ceiling rail and customers can check when their meals are ready on their smartphones, allowing them to enjoy more shopping as they wait for their meals to be cooked. Completed meals arrive at designated seats through a robot, and you can call the robot back after the meal to place empty dishes.

How does it sound? My last column explained that consumers will be able to enjoy a shopping experience of maximized benefits of both online and offline channels even within one shopping journey in the future omni-channel sphere. At Fresh Hippo, that is the reality.

As such, because of the 'retail tech' in every corner of the experience journey from checking products, buying the products to finishing a meal, now customers can experience the advantages of both channels frictionlessly moving to and from both online and offline channels. Many experts consider Fresh Hippo as the number one example when talking about future offline stores.

If Fresh Hippo unveiled the customer experience of our near future, Moby Mart is a store we will be experiencing in a slightly more distant future. Moby Mart is a self-driving convenience store developed by moving café Wheelys of the Netherlands, retail company 'Himalafy', and Hefei University in China.

When you felt sometimes too lazy to even walk to a nearby convenience store, did you ever imagined and wished for the store to come to you instead? With Moby Mart, that imagination becomes a reality. Moby Mart is equipped with a GPS navigation system and an AI solution, and customers can use a smartphone to call a Moby Mart to any location they want. At the mobile Moby Mart, customers can buy products by scanning the barcodes and after making payment, Moby Mart will move to the next location by being called by another customer.

The above picture is easily found on Google. It looks extremely futuristic, but Moby Mart is currently offered as a beta service in Shanghai and the picture is of the actual store. There are many videos on YouTube, so I recommend you check out how the store moves.

Now, the examples I listed until now are of technologies that are being applied in our everyday life one by one that make us think 'there will soon come a time we get to see them in reality'. The patents I will now introduce below are so innovative and new that we may have doubts about the feasibility. Shall we take a look at what the retail giants are dreaming of in the future retail sphere?

It is difficult to imagine what Walmart's '1 supermarket per 1 household' would look like with just the above image. According to Walmart, this patent is for an unattended store installed inside a consumer's home where the consumer can have items delivered to buy. The store is to be installed like a vending machine along a wall of the house. And because it is a customized store to the one residence, it analyzes frequently consumed foods and ingredients for a drone to stock up, and the biggest advantage of the store is that customers can prepare products they want when they want it. The below image is not related to the patent, but it will help you better understand the concept as it is an image of 'Echo Fridge' by Argodesign, which is a similar concept to Walmart's idea.

Retail giants like Walmart and Amazon are competing to file for patents by putting in a huge amount of investment in retail tech like 'mid-air logistics storage' or 'underground deliveries'. They are hard to imagine today, but one of these technologies may become the hit of future retail much like how Amazon's 1-Click payment patent led the golden days of Amazon.

Today's column took a look at a few examples into what the near future and distant future retail will offer us in terms of new experience centered around offline stores. They may seem absurd right now, but these bold imaginations of retailers may one day become a reality as the world we live in today was once an imagination of those who lived before us. I conclude my last column as I, too, as a customer, wait for the new world that will unfold.

Thank you for reading my columns until now. I wish you have an amazing end to a very eventful year and welcome the new year in good health.