People are overwhelmed by the omnipresent danger of virus due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

However, as grocery and household items need to be seen and checked in person before their purchase,

customers often resort to visiting the grocery store despite the reluctance.

Therefore, EMART, Korea’s leading in-person grocery store chain,

needed an original idea in shopping that allows customers to come shop with peace of mind,

yet does not interfere with their shopping experience.

We thought that if shopping cart handle, which might be laden with various viruses,

can be revamped into a tool for eliminating viruses,

we would not have to require extra inconvenient measures and actions from customers

to give them a sense of security.

So, EMART invents unheard-of shopping cart.

LIGHT SAVER with its design that resembles lightsabers in the movie “Star Wars” and disinfects the hands and cart handles throughout shopping time by emitting germicidal rays that are harmless to human body.

EMART paid attention to

shopping cart handles

to protect customers from viruses,

without getting in the way of their shopping experiences.

We believed that eliminating viruses from shopping cart handles

would translate into the reduced level of viruses in the customer’s entire shopping process,

and in turn, help mitigate an inexplicable sense of fear among customers.

Therefore EMART

decided to develop the first-ever shopping cart that ensures the safety

of not only the user but also other customers and the entire store

by simply rolling it during grocery shopping.

In collaboration with an enterprise specializing in the germicidal radiation technology,

we developed LIGHT SAVER, a cart handle that emits germicidal rays harmless to human body,

and loaded a total of 300 LIGHT SAVERs to EMART’s existing shopping carts.

At one selected EMART store in the greater Seoul Metropolitan area,

the campaigned was launched on November 19th, 2020.

Shopping carts loaded with LIGHT SAVERs were placed inside the store throughout the business hours, leading customers to use the cart voluntarily even without additional instructions or guidance.

Not only did numerous customers utilize shopping carts loaded with LIGHT SAVER,

the viral load of cart handles and customers’ hands showed an decrease.

In the comparison of the month when COVID-19 caused a drastic decrease in customer turnout and in-store shopping time and the month when the campaign was executed,

the most noticeable outcomes included:

11.6% increase in in-store customers

12.7% increase in each customer’s average purchase amount per visit

25.8% sales increase in EMART stores running the campaign

LIGHT SAVER not only mitigated the anxiety of customers

but also had positive impacts on EMART’s actual sales.