A Visit to Alibaba’s 盒马鲜生 Supermarket
If you live online shopping and you live in Asia, more likely than not you have heard of online shopping sites 淘宝 (Taobao) and 天猫 (Tmall), both owned by Alibaba. Today, we will be taking a look at another of Alibaba’s ventures, the 盒马鲜生 supermarket.
Online shopping is putting retail shops out of business. Why is Alibaba building physical stores when they are already the go-to for online shopping? 盒马 is no ordinary supermarket. It is a fusion of online and offline grocery shopping, and perhaps the future of supermarkets.
Lets begin with the offline aspect of the 盒马 supermarket. The store I visited is in Shanghai, but there are many more scattered around China. (There are currently 25 of such stores) The 盒马supermarket is easily identifiable by its cute hippopotamus logo.
At the entrance, you will receive a warm welcome from the hippopotamus mascot. Moving inside, all you will see are rows of food stores and a seafood market. Wait a minute, isn’t this a supermarket? Where are all the veggies and junk food?
All food stores support Alipay, Alibaba’s cashless payment method. In fact, Alipay is the main form of payment in 盒马 supermarket. If you do not have Alipay, you can still pay with cash.
The supermarket portion of this 盒马鲜生 in Shanghai only begins halfway through the shop. Here, you can find all the food that you will normally find in a supermarket. Unlike supermarkets in Singapore, you will not find non-food products here.
What is so special about 盒马 supermarket? If you take a closer look at he price tags, you will notice a barcode. You can download the 盒马 app on your phone and scan the barcodes to learn more about the products. I will talk more about the app below.
You placed a whole ton of food in your basket. Now, how do you pay? 盒马’s implementation is very similar to FairPrice’s; you can go to a cashier, or scan the items on your own. Again, you are encouraged to use Alipay, but cash is accepted.
That is about all there is to the 盒马 physical grocery store. It is not too different from the regular supermarkets we have in Singapore, but things get really interesting when you shop online for groceries using the 盒马 app. (Same app as the one above)
On the app, you can search for products like on 淘宝, but for groceries and food. Alternatively, if you already have a product and want to buy more, simply scan its barcode and the app will identify the product. Settle the payment and you will get the food in no time.
盒马鲜生 is a cool concept, but there is room for improvements. It will be great if customers can scan the products on the app before heading to the counter for payment, like what FairPrice is trying to do. With a well-developed app, this should not be too hard to implement.
Visiting 盒马鲜生? Remember to set up Alipay before hand. If you are going there expecting cool tech and innovations, prepare be disappointed. But if you are looking for somewhere to shop for fruits and snacks, this is the place you want to go.
