[Distribution Hot People] "Membership, the key is to provide only benefits that customers will truly use"… GS Retail 'The Pop'

Choi Yoon-jung, Manager of GS Retail Prime TFT

Launch of 'The Pop' Integrating 4 Brands
Points Accumulation and Usage Both Online and Offline
Plans to Expand Paid Subscriptions and Discounts

Choi Yoon-jung, Manager of GS Retail Prime TFT.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] GS Retail will launch an integrated membership service called 'THE POP' on May 1st through the memberships that were previously operated separately by its four brands: GS25, GS The Fresh, Lalavla, and GS FRESH.

Although it may seem like they are simply following the recent trend in the distribution industry of membership integration and preferential policies, this is clearly different. They aim to derive each customer's consumption characteristics and selectively provide benefits that are truly necessary for each customer, raising expectations about what the service will look like.

On the 7th, Yoonjung Choi, Manager of GS Retail's Prime TFT, said in an interview with Asia Economy, "Rather than giving a lot of benefits that customers don't even know about, we are creating membership policies with the intention of providing benefits that customers really need."

THE POP took a long time of one and a half years to officially launch. Considering that existing membership services in the distribution industry focus on simple integration and reuse of points, resulting in few practical benefits, they prepared a customized service that takes into account the individual characteristics of customers.

Manager Choi said, "It is characterized by being developed to provide more sophisticated personalized services as the accumulated data volume increases," adding, "While other membership services emphasize a unified platform, we focused on what benefits we can provide."

He continued, "THE POP's core is to provide only benefits that customers will actually use rather than giving a large quantity of unused benefits," and added, "The slogan reflects this point and was set as 'Connecting Convenience.'"

GS Retail expects membership activities offline to become more active through THE POP. Points can be accumulated across all GS Retail service points where consumption occurs regardless of the brand through the application (app). The accumulated points can be used equally both online and offline. They also anticipate that the current 12 million membership users will increase by more than 30% after THE POP launches.

The paid membership service 'THE POP Plus' also draws attention. GS25 plans to expand the Cafe25 paid membership, which was introduced as a pilot service last July, to multiple product categories across all brands.

The Cafe25 paid membership is a system where members pay a monthly fee and receive discounts every time they purchase coffee at GS25. THE POP Plus plans to expand the paid membership, which was piloted only for coffee, to brand-specific specialized products, and is currently reviewing a paid membership for GS25’s lunchbox products first.

Regarding this, Manager Choi explained, "Last year, the Cafe25 paid membership recruited 3,000 members and was extremely popular, selling out on the day the introduction was announced," adding, "We will continuously expand paid memberships to various product units by reflecting the improvements received from members so far."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.