South Korean retailer BGF Retail has tested AI-generated shoppers on lunch-box concepts, while Lotte Members is developing a separate model to assess products and marketing before changes reach customers.
BGF Retail, which operates CU convenience stores, said its proof of concept with AI startup Intellicia began in May 2026. The study examined lunch-box concepts. BGF said the analysis pointed to interest in meals that were both healthy and tasty, giving its product teams direction for menu development and lunch-box composition.
BGF said synthetic-consumer research can take three to five days, compared with several months for conventional surveys and interviews. The retailer plans to use Intellicia’s ParaStore tool to simulate product displays and merchandising in virtual CU stores. BGF and Intellicia signed a memorandum of understanding on July 14 and announced it the next day.
Lotte Members signed a July 14 agreement with Vibe Company and Zero to One Partners to develop a platform intended to combine AI modeling with social-media data and pseudonymized data associated with 45 million L.Point members. The planned tests include consumer and product segmentation, product suggestions and simulations of marketing responses.
The partners demonstrated their AI Twin Consumer platform at a Lotte marketing conference on Sept. 2, Vibe Company said. Vibe described it as still under development. The platform is intended to use consumer information to model buying behavior, but the companies have not announced a launch date.
Intellicia says its large language models generate virtual shopper profiles from consumer information. The company cautions that simulated responses may differ from real consumers’ views and says it does not guarantee their accuracy or completeness.
BGF presented faster research as a way to help teams respond to changing consumer trends. Lotte Members and its partners said they would continue commercialization discussions, without setting a date for the next step.
