Time now for our "Life & Info" segment... where we focus on information useful for your everyday life whether you are in Korea or somewhere else in the world.
Today, we are going to discuss a growing marketing trend in Korea, called 'untact marketing.'
We have our business correspondent Kim Hyesung in the studio.
So Hyesung, tell is more about this so-called "untact marketing" and the services it provides...
Untact marketing, "untact" is a combination of un plus tact, which refers to contact. So basically no contact. It's a form of marketing that avoids people-to-people, face-to-face contact between the seller and buyer.
Some examples include Amazon Go convenient stores that have no cashier, the first one that opened last year in Seattle, or cafes, movie theaters and fast food chains that have Kiosk machines, touch-screen machines that provide info with which you can pick goods and pay the bill.
This form of untact marketing is growing rapidly across all retail sectors in Korea.
The footage we are looking at here is of a ramen restaurant near a university campus that uses a Kiosk machine.
Customers can select from more than a dozen main dishes on the Kiosk machine, pay the bill, and get their dish in less than five minutes.
One ramen coasts about three U.S. dollars, I was actually surprised by the ingredients, all healthy, looks tasty and only two chefs run the store.
So for the sellers, Kiosk Machine helps reduce labor costs, especially with minimum wage up double digits in the last two years.
It's not just Amazon. Korean convenience stores have also opened a couple of cashier-less convenient stores over the past year, though quite a few are still in pilot process.
"Technological advances, including big data and AI have given birth to smart retail and smart consumers, enabling new services, like self-payment and autoatization that help increase efficiency. Now we can have one or no employees at the store and the employee can spend time on other management activities like product display or promotion."
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It's clear how these Kiosks can help businesses reduce labor costs and boost efficiency. But what about consumers? Why are they proving so popular?
It has to do with changing habits. A growing number of millennials, those in their teens and 20s are more used to smartphones and apps to buy goods than talking to an actual sales assistant.
According to a survey by Daehaknaeil Research Institute, one out of four Koreans in their 20s prefer messenger chats to face to face conversations.
"Consumers these days, young people, the so-called mobile generation, rely heavily on smartphones. They are more individualistic and want speed and fast transactions. Eating alone, drinking alone and shopping alone instead of people-to-people services. This is a global trend and retailers are weighing in with new untact marketing services."
And when it comes to shopping, young consumers look for product information online channels or reviews, so they know what