GS Home Shopping’s “mobile first” strategies have paid off. (image: Kobizmedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Korea Bizwire) – “Going mobile” seems to play increasingly major roles in e-business as a whole. And this trend is especially prominent in e-commerce market, a field in which old and new players are raging fiercer battles for more shares in the lucrative market.
GS Shop, GS Home Shopping(GSHS)’s online and mobile dedicated shopping platform, said on October 24 that its monthly visitor number has surpassed that of social commerce companies in September. GSHS is Korea’s major online shopping operator and established itself as a leading player in the electronic retailing and home shopping channels industry.
This can be interpreted as significant achievements for GS Shop since many ‘online-savvy’ — mostly young — consumers preferred visiting relatively new e-commerce platforms such as Coupang, Ticket Monster, to say, “old-fashioned” online shopping malls like GS Shop.
According to market research firm Korean Click, the number of visits to GS Shop pages including desktop computer and mobile devices for the month of September (11.98 million) outstripped that of the three top social commerce sites including Coupang, Ticket Monster, and WeMakePrice.
As for the number of monthly mobile visitors, it clocked in 6.80 million, which is comparable to that of top open market sites.
Its Mobile GS Shop, which accounted for only 0.2 percent of sales revenue (5.9 billion won) in total as late as 2011, has recorded sales of 285.5 billion won in the first half of the year, claiming 18 percent in total sales revenue. By the end of this year, the sales revenue through the mobile web page is expected to reach 800 billion won. In June this year, it hit the 1 million app download number.
GS’ ‘Going Mobile’ strategies have been driven by Huh, Tae-soo, CEO of GSHS who more often than not underscored the importance of “going mobile first” in the e-retailing business.
In fact GS opened a mobile-dedicated logistics center and it was even concerned about its advertising slogans — which should be fully ‘mobile-friendly’ taglines. It came as no surprise that GS announced it will be the first e-retailer in the nation to adopt KakaoPay, mobile-centric payment service platform operated by KakaoTalk.
By Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
