Web Comment

Ocado’s virtual store stunt caught your attention and prompted debate about the brand online. See the original story and on-location video at MWlinks.co.uk/OcadoVirtual and read comment extracts below.

Focus on main business

Ocado’s virtual pop-up store is another example of a retail company’s marketing department being completely unaligned to the main business.
Anyone who uses Ocado knows its website has issues, in particular the search facility is wholly inadequate. Indeed, you can find more on its site through Google than you can through its own search engine.

Now you have the marketing department with this gimmick suggesting people go to London to a physical shop to be able to add things to their weekly shopping basket.

Ocado needs to nail its core proposition first before doing this sort of thing.

Anonymous

Marketing masterstroke

This is a great idea from a marketing perspective it is aimed at existing customers; it take less space than a real store; and is ideal for London where retail space comes at a premium.

Digital Robot Gorilla

Random placement

One major problem is that there’s no way of knowing where items will be. The Tesco version in South Korea mimicked the actual shelf lay-out, but judging by your footage, the placement here is totally random.

Anonymous