(image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Dec. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — A growing number of South Koreans shopping at overseas online malls are picking Chinese sites, a tally from a credit card firm indicated Tuesday.
Purchase records from Nov. 1-26, compiled by the big data center at Shinhan Card, showed a 9.8 percent increase from last year in the monetary total of goods bought from overseas Internet sites. In terms of the number of purchases, this year’s total was up 16.6 percent.
The figures were derived from comparisons of the same period in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Chinese shopping malls outperformed rivals from other countries.
AliExpress took 9.5 percent of the purchases, up from 6 percent in 2016 and 6.1 percent last year. It ranked second after Amazon’s 16.3 percent.
Taobao, another Chinese Internet shopping site, grew from 2.3 percent in 2016 to 3.3 percent last year and to 4.4 percent this year, raising it to the third most used overseas mall. Alibaba made it to the top 10 for the first time this year with 1 percent.
The shift is stark when comparing the purchases during Black Friday in the United States and Singles’ Day in China. This year, overseas shopping during Singles’ Day rose 35 percent. Black Friday purchases stopped at a 9 percent gain.
Data showed 70.8 percent of purchases during Singles’ Day were for goods priced 50,000 won (US$44.32) or under. Shoppers in their 30s and 40s remained the biggest clients, but the number of those in their 20s increased 1.9 percentage points from last year.
(Yonhap)
