"Lotte Mart to Open 'Fulfillment Store' with Delivery Within 1 Hour After Order"

From order to in-store back packing, inspection, and shipment within 30 minutes

Delivery possible within as short as 1 hour, initially applied to Junggye and Gwanggyo stores

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] Lotte Mart announced on the 26th that it will open fulfillment stores that deliver products to customers within 1 hour after ordering at Junggye store in Seoul and Gwanggyo store in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province by the end of next month.

The existing online order delivery based on stores was a reservation delivery system where customers set a desired time slot to receive ordered items within a 15km wide commercial area. However, the fulfillment store focuses on immediate delivery targeting the core commercial area within a 5km radius of the store. Immediate delivery is completed within 30 minutes including preparation for delivery. Therefore, Lotte Mart expects that it will take about 1 to 1.5 hours from the time the customer places an order until the ordered product is delivered to the customer.

In particular, at these stores, the concept of active shopping is applied, where customers, who are the main agents of purchase, do not passively wait for ordered products by setting reservation times, but can receive desired products at desired times and in desired ways.

Online order customers can reserve delivery times and receive products in various forms such as in-store pickup and drive-thru pickup. Offline store visitors can also shop without a shopping cart through QR code shopping.

Lotte Mart stated, "The areas where Junggye and Gwanggyo stores are located have a high proportion of people in their 20s to 40s and many office workers living in apartments, making the newly introduced immediate delivery suitable," adding, "Online order volumes are expected to increase up to 5 times at Junggye and 8 times at Gwanggyo."

Along with this, Lotte Mart will use Junggye and Gwanggyo stores as testbeds for future-type stores and implement various services. First, through the M Coupon member-exclusive 'Smart Cart,' customers can scan products and make easy payments without using checkout counters. The 'next-generation electronic price tags,' which can update information on various products in real time, and 'kiosk unmanned checkout counters' made with large screens for user convenience will also be introduced. According to Lotte Mart, the speed of checking out 10 general products has improved by about 20% compared to existing unmanned checkout counters. Additionally, an 'autonomous product delivery robot' that performs product transport functions for in-store pickup orders will also be introduced.

Lotte Mart expects that if about 100,000 offline-focused customers use the integrated on-offline fulfillment service, monthly sales will increase by 5.4 billion KRW and annual sales by 64.8 billion KRW. Through this, they plan to develop the fulfillment store into Lotte Mart’s representative success case.

Park Se-ho, head of Lotte Mart’s Digital Strategy Division, emphasized, "The integrated on-offline fulfillment store is designed with the customer’s perspective as the top priority," adding, "We will strive to realize a customer-centric store that provides the products customers want, in the way they want, and at the time they want."