Iconic British fashion brand and retailer Burberry has opened a luxury concept store using social media interactions

Burberry teamed with Tencent for the new store in Shenzhen, China, and plans to roll it out across its 61 store network in the country.

Tencent's WeChat social messaging platform – which has more than 1 billion users in China and is the country’s version of WhatsApp – is key to the new store concept.

A WeChat programme allows shoppers to unlock exclusive content and personalised experiences they can then share on their social media networks.

Product information

All the clothes in the new conceit store are labelled with QR codes which show product information on the customer's phone when scanned.

Burberry CEO Marco Gobbetti said. "When it came to innovating around social and retail, China was the obvious place to go as home to some of the most digitally savvy luxury customers."

Commenting on the store launch, Elliott Jacobs, EMEA commerce consulting director at LiveArea said: “The key behind a lot of this innovation is data. Tencent (through WeChat) has access to extraordinary volumes of consumer data, with millions of people using WeChat to interact with brands, search and browse products, share social media content and make payments.”