Background

People are overwhelmed by the omnipresent danger of virus due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, as grocery and household items need to be seen and checked in person before their purchase, customers often resort to visiting the grocery store despite the reluctance. Therefore, EMART, Korea’s leading in-person grocery store chain, needed an original idea in shopping that allows customers to come shop with peace of mind, yet does not interfere with their shopping experience.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

We thought that if shopping cart handle, which might be laden with various viruses, can be revamped into a tool for eliminating viruses, we would not have to require extra inconvenient measures and actions from customers to give them a sense of security. So, EMART invents unheard-of shopping cart. LIGHT SAVER with its design that resembles lightsabers in the movie “Star Wars” and disinfects the hands and cart handles throughout shopping time by emitting germicidal rays that are harmless to human body.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

The reason why LIGHT SAVER is an innovative novelty lies within its ground-breaking re-design of traditional shopping carts by revamping their handles, which carry the highest risk of virus transmission, into ones that eliminate viruses on spot. In collaboration with an enterprise specializing in the germicidal radiation technology, we developed a cart handle capable of emitting germicidal rays that are harmless to human body and attached 300 LIGHT SAVERs to EMART’s existing shopping carts. One of the EMART stores in the greater Seoul metropolitan area was selected to launch the campaign on November 19th, 2020. LIGHT SAVER-loaded carts were placed inside the store throughout the business hours, prompting customers to utilize the carts on a voluntary basis, without additional guidance. The launch of the campaign was announced on the official social media accounts of the store and was extensively covered in the media.

List the results (20% of vote)

According to the measured results, from the opening to the closing of the store, numerous customers used shopping carts loaded with LIGHT SAVERs, and the viral load of cart handles and customers’ hands was reported to have decreased. In the comparison of the month when COVID-19 caused a drastic decrease in customer turnout and in-store shopping time and the month when the campaign was executed, the most noticeable outcomes included: 11.6% increase in in-store customers 12.7% increase in each customer’s average purchase amount per visit 25.8% sales increase in EMART stores running the campaign In this sense, LIGHT SAVER proved to not only mitigate the anxiety of customers but also boosted the actual sales of EMART. Also with an increase in brand favorability rating. A high volume of customer requests has been made to expand the coverage of the campaign to include more stores.