(image: Pixabay)
SEOUL, March 11 (Korea Bizwire) — A growing number of South Korean consumers are gaining shopping information through the social media platform Instagram.
Local pollster Open Survey recently conducted a survey of 1,000 local consumers. Among 675 consumers who had used Instagram within the past month, 33 percent followed the accounts of influencers, up 8.8 percentage points from a year ago.
There are many cases in which Instagram influencers act as agents for sales of various products, and promote group buying for their audience. Some of them are engaged in their own retail businesses, including the development of their own-brand products.
In contrast, the share of consumers who follow the accounts of entertainers fell to 42.5 percent, down 4.7 percentage points from a year before.
Among the 675 Instagram users, 15.6 percent said that they had bought products using the shopping tab function offered by Instagram.
In response to a question asking which type of Instagram postings arise a sense of resistance or could be seen as less trustworthy, 66.2 percent (multiple answers possible) picked postings that pretend not to be advertisements but actually are.
In particular, 70.7 percent of those in their 20s and 74.7 percent of those in their 30s showed a sense of resistance against such postings.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
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