Hema, whose English name is Freshippo, could also be a high-tech supermarket designed around your smartphone. Your smartphone is used for everything within the shop , from placing items during a digital handcart while you purchase groceries, to getting product nutritional information, to paying for your goods.

Hema is a component of Alibaba’s “New Retail” strategy. Jack Ma is the inspiration of the latest innovation and he recommends the mixing of online, offline, logistics and data across one value chain. Hema with the platform that aimed toward connecting online and offline retail and digitizing stores so as to supply an unprecedented customer experience.

Hema with many of us signing up for the Hema shopping app and quite 60% of Hema’s gross merchandise value coming from online orders. to urge how quickly Alibaba is expanding these stores consider the very fact that Amazon opened eight Amazon Go stores within an equivalent amount of your time that Alibaba opened 100 Hema supermarkets. It doesn't appear as if the expansion of Hema stores is slowing down anytime soon with Alibaba going to open 2,000 of these stores by 2023.

Here’s the new norm we’re living in and If you're interested in the longer term of retail here are a number of the recommendations you ought to look out for.

1. Scan and go. to buy at Hema customers got to download the Hema mobile app. Once it's downloaded customers shop by scanning QR codes on each item they want to get then the item is added to their digital handcart . Scanning a product’s QR code also provides the customer with information about the merchandise including how fresh it's (by watching when it had been delivered to the store). Other data that's available includes nutritional information, customer reviews, recipes the customer can make using the merchandise also as delivery options if the customer wants the item delivered to their home.

Chinese consumers are mostly tech savvy and spend most of their time on mobile to buy for goods. Therefore, a part of the success of Alibaba building its digital stores drives most of the web traffic in China to buy online.

2. Personalized shopping recommendations using AI. The Hema app also remembers shopper buying behavior and leverages machine learning to make personalized product recommendations for patrons .

3. Digital price tags. Products come alongside its digital price tags and may be updated in real time are the foremost practical implementation within the current market with viruses spreading all around. they will be particularly useful if Hema wants to, say for instance , update the worth of seafood supported market rates. It also allows the retailer to make sure that prices online match in-store when necessary.

4. Stores as fulfillment centres. Employees pick online orders in the future and once they need to be picked they're placed on a conveyor belt that carries the order to the rear of the shop to urge it ready for delivery.

5. Digital payments including face recognition. When customers are finished shopping they pay using Hema's mobile app which is linked to Alipay. Alipay, founded by Alibaba, is a web payment app that has quite 1 billion monthly active users. It's the world’s largest online payment platform with more users than PayPal.

At Hema locations, when available, customers have the selection of paying using face recognition payment technology. At self-checkouts a camera embedded within the screen of a kiosk scans the customer’s face. Then face recognition payment technology is then wont to verify the customer’s identity. Customers also enter their phone number into the kiosk as a safeguard against fraud.Initially digital payments were the sole option for Hema customers but customers resisted this and therefore the Chinese government found the practice to be unlawful. 

6. Super fast delivery (even faster than Amazon). Customers shopping at Hema can have groceries delivered in half-hour for free of charge , if the delivery address is within three kilometres of a Hema store. This is applicable to customers that shop within the future and wish their orders delivered to their homes or if they made the acquisition online. This service is even faster than Amazon’s.