Hankyu Hanshin Department Store - WeChat Pay Platform

Introduction

Hankyu Hanshin Department Store is the world's first station-type department store, and one of the largest department stores in Japan. The store brings together fashion and luxury brands, a variety of accessories, food from around the world, world-class groceries, art works, and other daily necessities. The Hankyu Hanshin Department Store is located near the Umeda Station in Osaka. It is an extremely lively and prosperous place with 50 million people visiting the store each year. It is also a must-go for visitors to Japan. Basically, every visitor to Osaka will go shopping at the Hankyu Hanshin Department Store. In recent years, more and more Chinese tourists visit the Hankyu Hanshin Department Store to make their purchases. More than 80% of the duty-free purchases there come from Chinese tourists.

Challenges Faced

With the increasing number of tourists visiting Japan, it is important to solve the difficulties faced by Chinese tourists when they travel to Japan. There are four major issues to be solved by the Hankyu Department Store.

1. Payment inconvenience: Chinese tourists can go anywhere in China with their mobile phone, who rarely carry a lot of cash during travel, which limits their shopping experience in Japan.

2. Waiting in long lines: Consumers will buy a lot of things whenever they visit the store, which causes long lines and long wait times. A single checkout may take up to 20 to 30 minutes. For Chinese tourists, in addition to waiting in the checkout line, they also have to line up and wait for tax refunds at the tax refund counter. These are causes of bad user experience.

3. Language communication difficulties: There are language barriers when it comes to shopping. In spite of the shopping guide in the store, there are still lots of information that Chinese tourists cannot understand. Oftentimes, they might go to many places to find one product, which is very troublesome.
The language barrier is also reflected in eating due to not being able to read the menu or communicate with the restaurant servers. This usually makes Chinese tourists hard to order food and even leads to them ordering the wrong food.

4. Forgetting to bring membership card: Although the Hankyu Department Store has its own overseas VIP customer management system, its initial customer card is physical. For Chinese tourists, they often forget to take their physical cards out with them or sometimes lost their cards, which creates unnecessary trouble for both tourists and shops.

Solutions & Results

The above issues may not only result in increased operating costs of the store, but also limit the ability of the consumers to shop, undoubtedly leading to a bad consumer experience. None of these are conducive to the improvement of store's transaction rate or the establishment of the brand.
In response to the above issues, the Hankyu Hanshin Department Store, in addition to linking WeChat Pay to the entire store, has fully integrated WeChat ecosystem capabilities. They've launched four WeChat Mini Programs designed specifically to the above issues, addressing various needs in the process of Chinese tourists' consumption:

2. "Scan Code to Order Food" Mini Program: In the Hankyu Department Store food court area (with food and beverage outlets), they provide a service where Chinese tourists can order their food by scanning the QR code with WeChat and make a payment via WeChat Pay.
For tourists, ordering food from a Chinese menu with pictures can avoid making mistakes. While stores can reduce the cost of communication, as servers can simply show customers to the table to place a self-service order and have food directly sent to them. This streamlined process has significantly improve the efficiency.

3. "Beauty Makeup Appointment" Mini Program: Through the Hankyu Beauty Makeup Appointment Mini Program, Chinese tourists can search for product information in advance on their mobile phones, allowing them to book beauty products and pay for orders in advance. They can then pick up the goods on the spot. With the "reservation and pick-up" solution, the store creates smooth, one-stop shopping experience. Visitors can now say goodbye to long lines, and the operational efficiency of the store has also been largely elevated.

4. "VIP Membership" Mini Program: This Mini Program is linked with the Hankyu Hanshin Department Store member identification system, allowing Chinese consumers to activate membership by directly scanning the QR code. They can earn bonus points with every purchase, and enjoy discounts, the tax refund green channel, and many other benefits.
With this, Chinese tourists don't have to carry a traditional physical membership card any more. Now, they can get a discount on their entire purchase and enjoy line-jumping privilege for tax refund.

In addition to the convenience of a series of custom Mini Programs, Hankyu Hanshin Department Store also implemented WeChat Pay's "Overseas Travel Gift Packets" Mini Program in each store. By scanning the QR code, Chinese tourists can get exclusive vouchers and exchange-rate vouchers. After shopping, they can also scan the QR code in the "We Tax Refund" Mini Program via WeChat to get a tax refund in real time.