(image: 11Street)
SEOUL, Jun. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Popular online shopping mall 11Street’s platform that allows overseas individuals to make purchases from South Korean vendors revealed that Taiwanese shoppers had topped the list of foreign buyers who purchased K-pop idol-related goods.
11Street revealed today that the largest percentage of its online overseas buyers came from Taiwan, accounting for 30.7 percent of its overseas revenue in merchandise excluding record sales.
Purchases from Japan were second (10.8 percent), followed by the U.S. (10.6 percent), China (6.6 percent) and Hong Kong (6.2 percent).
Customers that made up the overall overseas Chinese population of Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau accounted for almost half of the total purchasing population at 43.2 percent.
11Street said Taiwanese customers primarily purchased merchandise associated with Super Junior, SHINee, BLACKPINK, iKON and GOT7. Japanese fans bought products featuring Eun Ji-won, while their American counterparts preferred GOT7 merchandise.
Super Junior merchandise was popular in China, while Hong Kongers preferred EXO products.
Outside of Asia, online consumers from a total of 60 countries purchased K-pop merchandise from 11Street’s website, including those from Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The website stated that after the release of its English and Chinese websites last year, the total volume of transactions over the last three months had increased 150 percent compared to the first three months following the launch of the vendors’ multi-lingual websites.
One official at the online shopping mall said that more overseas fans are buying local merchandise. “The website will be utilized as a global distribution channel,” said the official.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
