Korea’s Dairy Aisle Tells a Story of Aging Society and Changing Tastes. Photo shows the dairy section at an E-Mart store. (Courtesy of E-Mart.)
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — As South Korea’s prolonged low birth rate reshapes consumer demand, yogurt has emerged as an unexpected sales driver at major retailers, while milk — once a staple — continues to lose ground.
According to data released Sunday by the retail industry, Emart, the country’s largest discount chain, ranked milk ninth in cumulative sales for the January–November period, down two places from a year earlier. Milk had consistently placed fifth from 2019 to 2022 before slipping to seventh in 2023 and falling further this year.
Yogurt, by contrast, entered Emart’s top 10 sales list for the first time since the retailer began tracking item-level rankings in 2019, landing at tenth place.
The shift is also evident in the sales mix. In 2022, milk accounted for 55.7 percent of combined milk-and-yogurt sales, compared with 44.3 percent for yogurt. By this year, the gap had narrowed dramatically to 1.8 percentage points, with milk at 50.9 percent and yogurt at 49.1 percent. In March, April and June, yogurt sales even surpassed milk for the first time.
Yogurt Emerges as a Retail Winner as Milk Consumption Continues to Fall (Image courtesy of Rawpixel/CCL)
Industry analysts attribute milk’s decline largely to demographic change. Government data show the teenage population — milk’s core consumer base — shrank from about 5.7 million, or 11.2 percent of the population, in 2015 to roughly 4.5 million, or 8.8 percent, this year.
Yogurt, meanwhile, has benefited from a shift in perception among consumers in their 20s and 30s. Once seen mainly as a snack, yogurt is increasingly consumed as a meal replacement, protein supplement and gut-health product.
“Dairy consumption trends are changing rapidly, and that is clearly reflected in our sales structure,” an Emart official said. “We will continue to adjust our product assortment and in-store displays to match evolving consumer lifestyles.”
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
