LG Adds More Unmanned Retail Shops to Meet Contactless Shopping Desires

LG Electronics is expanding the number of its unstaffed retail stores from the original nine, which opened in May, to 19 as of Wednesday (Dec. 29), AJU Business Daily reported.

The Seoul, South Korea-headquartered electronics giant plans to have 30 unstaffed stores up and running by the end of June 2022 to meet the growing demand for contactless shopping as the pandemic continues.

“More and more customers prefer [non-contact] experiences due to COVID-19,” Oh Seung-jin, the LG official in charge of domestic markets, said in a statement.

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Unstaffed retail stores are open from 8:30 p.m. until midnight to enable customers to browse the aisles after authenticating their identity at the front door kiosks. Shoppers can use kiosks to get additional information about a particular product and purchase merchandise using QR Codes or a mobile app. Shoppers can also get questions answered via Kakao Talk chat service.

LG first introduced unmanned shops for domestic home appliance retailers and trialed the concept in nine stores — six in Seoul and one each in Incheon, Gyeonggi and Busan.

About 6,000 people visited the retailers in six months, with roughly 70% of shoppers being in their 20s and 30s, according to the report. Over 80% of respondents in a survey of visitors indicated that they were highly satisfied and would visit an unstaffed store again.

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There are numerous unmanned stores in South Korea — mainly convenience stores — but most use technology that requires customers to scan the barcodes of each product they plan to purchase. Payments must be made using a credit card or another digital payment method, per the report.

The South Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus (LGU+) opened its first unstaffed retail shop in Seoul, where customers authenticate themselves with fingerprints and passwords and can generate QR Codes for payments.

The state’s internet watchdog, the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), opened an unstaffed convenience store at its headquarters in the southern city of Naju. One goal of the pilot is to collect data to share with security companies and eventually create innovative smart-store-related technologies.