SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — A Bank of Korea proposal on how to reduce the amount of pocket change Koreans carry around has proven to be a success among the selected stores the new service is being tested at. The bank has made it possible for shoppers at three major convenience store chains and [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — Online shopping is experiencing a growth surge, accounting for close to 20 percent of all retail sales in the first quarter of this year, data showed Friday. Retail transactions in the three months to March totaled 96.56 trillion won (US$85.83 billion), a growth of 4.7 percent from the same [...]
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 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Local businesses are introducing so-called “concept stores” to improve the image of their brands. Such stores include pop-up stores or traditional offline shops with in-house cafés and gardens, or retail spaces decorated with different themes to appeal to more customers. SkinFood, a cosmetics company, operates two outlets with cafés [...]
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) – Profits at top foreign luxury brands in South Korea stagnated last year, with some labels unable to come out of the red, industry data showed Friday. According to the data provided by the e-disclosure site of the regulator Financial Supervisory Service, last year’s operational profits at Ferragamo Korea shed [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) – Online shopping malls are partnering with premium children’s brands as sales in the segment are growing faster than for cheaper labels, industry watchers said Thursday. First-quarter sales of brand name children’s clothing and accessories increased 43 percent on-year at online mall 11st Street, compared with a 34.7 percent rise [...]
SEJONG, March 31 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s industrial output jumped at the fastest pace in nearly four years in February, government data showed Friday. Production in the mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity industries moved up 6.6 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the highest on-year gain since January 2013, when it posted [...]
SEOUL, March 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s tourism needs to revamp itself to reduce its dependency on China and grow into an industry that creates more added value, experts said Sunday, amid rising tension with the neighboring country over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system. Local tourism is expected to suffer a major [...]
SEOUL, March 6 (Korea Bizwire) – Stocks of major retailers and their affiliates with business ties to China continued to plunge Monday, as Beijing has intensified its measures against South Korea in what appears to be retaliation for the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile battery. Lotte Shopping Co., a key unit of retail giant [...]