New Tesco Lotus shopping app features barcode scan

The company targets 200,000 downloads of the app this year, which should double its online sales from the 2014 level. Last year, its online sales were generated from its website and amounted to less than 1 per cent of in-store sales.

Wanna Swuddugul, the retail giant’s digital and online business director, said its online sales had been growing rapidly since the launch of its shopping website two years ago, doubling last year.

"The average amount of online shopping is 5 times bigger than shopping via stores," said Wanna.

She said that in Europe, online shopping amounted to 10 per cent of in-store shopping. About 20-30 per cent of the total online shopping there is done via mobile phones.

She said the "Tesco Lotus Shop Online" app had been developed in Britain. Its distinguishing feature is to allow customers to make orders by scanning a product’s barcode rather than having to surf through the online store to seek the particular items |they need. This makes online grocery shopping much |easier.

It has reserved 20,000 product items from the |more than 100,000 items available at stores for online shopping. They will be delivered from five of its stores – Rama II, Rama IV, Chang Watthana, Pak Kret and Srinakrarin. This kind of mobile shopping is now available in Bangkok and surrounding provinces, Pattaya, Phuket and Chiang Mai.

To shop with the Tesco Lotus Shop Online app, which is available on the iOS and Android platforms, after downloading it into their smartphones, customers are required to sign in (the first time only), then open the app and scan away.

Customers can choose among six delivery times between 10am and 10pm, and there is no minimum order, but they will be charged Bt60 per delivery. They can pay online with a credit card or pay on delivery with cash.

During the promotion period, under an agreement with Plus Property, people living in one of its projects in Bangkok will not be charged the Bt60 delivery fee.