eBay Korea has joined forces with nationwide convenience store chain GS25 to offer consumers a combined online-offline sales service.
The partnership will see the launch of the “Smile Box” service, in which deliveries are made to an unmanned box for single-person households and female customers. The service is available 24 hours a day, and customers will be able to receive their deliveries ordered online from Gmarket, Auction and G9 at their nearest GS25 store.
The service will begin in August with a trial installation of Smile Boxes across 50 GS25 stores in Seoul, with the plan to gradually expand it nationwide. The boxes will be installed in areas with a high number of deliveries (determined through analysis of Gmarket and Auction delivery information) that have a large concentration of single-person households.
This “customer-centric endeavour is the future for online and mobile shopping,” said an eBay Korea representative. “We hope to build an enhanced, more convenient shopping environment for our customers.”