In recent years, the Korean e-commerce market has been like a giant ship that is gradually slowing down while sailing on a stable sea. The growth momentum has slowed down significantly, and the competitive landscape among sellers has also shown new changes.
Against this background, sellers are exploring new development paths. Overseas markets have become the “new continent” in their eyes, showing a new trend of simultaneous layout of domestic and foreign markets.
At present, the Korean e-commerce market has formed Coupang and Naver
Shopping is dominated by two major players, with SSG.com, Gmarket, 11 Street and other platforms also competing for a limited share in the fierce market competition.
Although South Korea’s online shopping transaction volume exceeded 272 trillion won (approximately RMB 1.2 trillion) last year, setting a record high, the growth rate was only 4.9%.
This data clearly shows that the Korean e-commerce market has gradually matured, and the competition among sellers has also shifted from simply competing for existing traffic to in-depth competition to explore new needs and open up new markets.
Among the many ways to develop overseas markets, AliExpress’s Korean Product Hall “K-Venue” has become a very representative case.
AliExpress is a well-known cross-border e-commerce platform in China. The products sold in K-Venue are shipped directly by local Korean sellers, providing merchants with an excellent opportunity to reach new consumer groups.
Merchants settled in have stated that the new users introduced through AliExpress have low overlap with existing sales channels and have actually brought new sales.
Some merchants have achieved the highest sales performance across multiple sales channels simply by relying on the platform’s own traffic and regular promotions.
At the same time, more and more Korean sellers are firmly setting their sights on overseas markets.
According to data from the Statistics Korea, cross-border e-commerce exports in the first quarter of this year reached 1.0599 trillion won, a year-on-year increase of 24.4%, exceeding 1 trillion won in the quarter for the first time; while the growth rate of online overseas shopping during the same period was only 1.2%.
Industry analysts believe that Korean products have always been popular in overseas markets, and the price advantage brought by the depreciation of the Korean won has jointly promoted the rapid growth of the reverse overseas shopping market.
Facing this market trend, South Korea’s major e-commerce platforms are also accelerating their overseas expansion.
Coupang provides support for the export of Korean small and medium-sized enterprises through cross-border business in Taiwan, China; Gmarket cooperates with Alibaba’s Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada to further expand sales channels; 11 Street has officially entered the reverse overseas shopping market by opening a Korean pavilion on China’s JD.com.
The industry generally believes that as the Korean e-commerce market enters a mature stage, the ability to obtain new demand and expand overseas markets will become an important factor in determining the competitiveness of sellers.
Relevant people in the circulation industry said: “It is no longer possible to achieve rapid growth by relying solely on existing platforms and the domestic demand market. The trend of sellers expanding to new customer groups and overseas markets will further accelerate.” In the future market competition, whether Korean sellers can successfully explore overseas markets will greatly affect their survival and development.
