Tesco Trials Virtual Store at Gatwick Airport

With Gatwick airport now in full holiday mode and with thousands of passengers passing through it every day, Supermarket giants Tesco have begun the 2 week trial of their virtual grocery shop so that the shoppers will have the opportunity to return home to a full fridge.

The virtual shop works in partnership with the Tesco grocery app, as there are 10 touchscreen monitors placed around Gatwick's North terminal which contain a selection of the best selling groceries. Shoppers can then use the app on their smartphones to scan the barcodes on the touchscreens and order their shopping which can be delivered to their doors when they arrive home from holiday.

Tesco revealed that 16% of all online shopping with them features a step on a smartphone, whether that be to check a price when on the go or to make a full purchase. This figure is increasing as smartphone ownership grows, so Tesco's move to try and incorporate new ways of mobile grocery shopping is a smart one.

Gatwick's North terminal sees around 30,000 people depart per day between the 6^th and 19^th of August, making it the busiest 2 weeks of the year in travel terms. With an average of 70 minutes waiting time before departure, passengers have a substantial window of time to do their shopping, so if this trial goes well we can expect to not only see the touch screens all year round in Gatwick, but in airports all over the UK.

This move comes after the successful launch of the world's first virtual store which Tesco opened in South Korea, which allowed shoppers to buy online using their mobile phones to point at advertising billboards scattered around bus stops and subways.

With Tesco's new mobile grocery shopping strategy already taking shape, we can expect the raival supermarkets to begin to follow suit, so with such intense competition to advance the quickest, the future is bright for mobile grocery shopping.