CU, Pre-Sale of New Products on Mobile... "Advancing App Services"

Selling 'Kimchips' as the First Product

A model is introducing Kim Chips at CU.
[Photo by BGF Retail]

Recently, convenience stores have actively utilized their mobile-based e-commerce infrastructure as a testbed for selling new products.

On the 12th, CU revealed major new products such as Yonsei Cream Bread Hwang Cheese Flavor, Korea University 1905 Mammoth Bread, and Baek Jong-won's Meat Jjamppong about two days earlier offline through the membership application (app) Pocket CU's product search and pre-order functions, which have been in place since last year.

In the case of Yonsei Milk Cream Bread Hwang Cheese Flavor, as the product was searched on Pocket CU, word of mouth about the launch spread on social networking services (SNS) and online communities, resulting in 2,000 units sold within 10 minutes of the start of sales on the day of pre-order. This is the shortest time and highest sales volume for a Pocket CU pre-order. Online pre-orders are serving as a gauge to predict the product's success after its offline release.

CU is introducing a new product sourcing process that conducts online pre-sales for various products before deciding whether to launch them offline. The first product to be pre-sold on Pocket CU is Gim Chips. This product is a kimchi snack made using domestic kimchi and Cheorwon Odae rice, prepared with traditional bugak cooking methods, characterized by the crispy texture and taste of the edges of kimchi pancakes. Starting with this product, CU plans to analyze sales trends and customer preferences to showcase differentiated products from various categories first on Pocket CU, then expand their release offline.

A BGF Retail official said, “As the number of customers using Pocket CU increases, we plan to change the convenience store product operation method centered on offline store sales and actively introduce verified popular products to stores. Since online sales are rapidly increasing, we will continuously advance our services to enable more convenient and reasonable shopping.”

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