SEOUL, Jun. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Coupang, South Korea’s No. 1 online marketplace, has come under fire for allegedly sacking nearly a tenth of its delivery staff, adding further woes to the money losing startup that won kudos for its bold investment in logistics, industry sources said Wednesday. On Tuesday, some 75 former and current [...]
SEOUL, May 25 (Korea Bizwire) – Online shopping malls are fast losing customer traffic, industry data showed Thursday, compounding their massive business losses last year. According to the data, the number of unique visitors to the six top online shopping sites totaled 84.86 million last month. This is 9.2 percent less than the same month [...]
SEOUL, May 22 (Korea Bizwire) – A customized shopping app created by a South Korean startup company that recommends clothes for customers based on their body shape, skin tone and the occasion has made its debut in New York’s fashion industry. 42 Media, a startup company consisting of young South Koreans in their 30s who have [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Grocery shopping via online and mobile channels in South Korea rose sharply in the first quarter from a year earlier, backed by robust demand for delivery services of fresh food amid a rise in the number of one-person households, data showed Friday. The amount of transactions made for fresh produce through online shopping malls reached 2.18 trillion won (US$1.92 billion), up 35.6 percent from the first three months of [...]
SEJONG, May 4 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s online sales continued their upbeat mode to reach a fresh record high in March amid recovering consumer sentiment, government data showed Thursday. Total online transactions reached 6.33 trillion won (US$5.58 billion) in March, up 21.3 percent from 5.22 trillion won tallied a year earlier, according to the [...]
SEOUL, April 28 (Korea Bizwire) – The decline of the retail industry – that is, the brick-and-mortar portion of the market – is no secret. In the U.S., major retailers have shuttered hundreds of stores over the past decade, including Sears and Kmart, which saw their numbers drop from some 3,800 to 1,430 stores over [...]
SEOUL, April 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Korea’s e-book market has been growing while the wider book industry is shrinking, a recent report from a government agency showed Monday. The report by the Publication Industry Agency of Korea about the general condition of the country’s publishing industry showed the industry’s total sales amounted to 7.58 trillion [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s online shopping site operators continued to report operating losses last year from a year earlier, as more market competition hurt their profitability, regulatory data showed Friday. Coupang Inc. suffered a combined operating loss of 560 billion won (US$490.8 million) in the January-December period of 2016 compared with [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) – As the fourth industrial revolution reshapes the landscape of online shopping of our time, advanced technology such as chatbots that assist shoppers are proving popular among consumers despite fears jobs will be taken away by robots and automation. Inside reports from the distribution industry yesterday revealed companies that have [...]
SEOUL, March 31 (Korea Bizwire) – A new update to SK Telecom’s artificial intelligence voice assistant NUGU will see users shop online through voice commands without the hassle of turning on their mobile or laptop. SK Telecom has teamed up with its e-commerce platform 11st, one of the largest online shopping malls in South Korea, to [...]