With “DingDong,” a social shopping service for the mobile platform, LG Uplus elbows its way into the market.
The service provides smartphone users with information on franchise shops of diverse categories within the vicinity. If the user visits the shop, he or she automatically earns mileage points, which they can spend at the DingDong online mall.
“Small shops usually rely on ineffective marketing tools such as flyers. If they hand out flyers to a thousand people, only three or four end up entering the shop,” a representative for LG Uplus said. He cited statistics, according to which among the few who actually visit the shop, one out of four buy something. The point here is how to induce people to visit the shop, and DingDong focuses on this. LG Uplus expects DingDong to be about nine to 20 times more effective in marketing than conventional methods, as it provides information, coupons and other incentives for shoppers already near the locations of businesses.
Currently, around 1,000 shops, including cosmetics retailer The Face Shop and Beautiplex, as well as digital retailer PixDix have subscribed to DingDong as a franchise. LG Uplus plans to increase the number of franchised shops to 100,000 by the end of the year.
Smartphone users can download the DingDong application for free at application stores including Google’s Android Market, Apple’s App Store, or the T Store of SK Telecom and the OZ Store of LG Uplus.
