Total transaction volume exceeds 80 trillion! The Korean e-commerce market is seriously biased towards giants

The Korean e-commerce market is increasingly tilted toward the "Big Three". Although the market size is growing rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting benefits are concentrated in only a few top e-commerce platforms. The industry expects this trend to continue in the future.

In South Korea's market structure where scale is the essence of competitiveness, it will be difficult to create an opportunity to reverse the situation. Therefore, some forecasts believe that starting from this year, there will be e-commerce platforms that are squeezed out of the market.

According to the Korea National Statistical Office , online shopping transactions in South Korea amounted to 161.12 trillion won last year, up 19.1% from the previous year. Mobile platforms have driven the growth of the market. Last year, shopping transactions via mobile devices amounted to 108.6833 trillion won , up 24.5 % from the previous year .

Last year, transactions on South Korea’s major e-commerce platforms accounted for about half of the entire market.

Last year, the e - commerce platforms with transaction volume exceeding 20 trillion won were Naver ( 28 trillion won), Coupon (22 trillion won) and eBay Korea (20 trillion won). Together with 11 Street , which achieved a transaction volume of 10 trillion won , these four platforms accounted for about half of the total transaction volume of e-commerce in South Korea .

Even the combined transaction volume of platforms such as Lotte ON , We Make Price, TMON, and SSG, whose transaction volume is less than 10 trillion won, cannot exceed that of Naver, which ranks first.

Even this year, the market's one-sidedness continues. Coupang's sales in the first quarter were 4.7348 trillion won , up 74% from the previous year . eBay Korea and Naver Shopping's sales increased by 25% and 40.3% respectively from the previous year.

In contrast, e-commerce platforms other than the Big Three have either stagnated or experienced negative growth. 11th Street's sales in the first quarter of 2021 increased by 1.5% to 131.3 billion won compared to the same period last year.

Last year, SSG.com's sales in the first quarter of last year increased by 53% compared with the same period of the previous year, while this year's first quarter sales increased by only 9.8%. Lotte ON's sales in the first quarter decreased by 41.9% compared with the same period last year to 28 billion won. It is reported that the situation of We Make Price and TMON platforms is similar.

An industry insider said: "It is true that the entire Korean e-commerce market received a lot of attention and growth last year, but this is only a good thing for the leading companies. E-commerce platforms below the middle circle are losing influence due to fierce competition among top companies."

South Korea

E-commerce

Transaction Amount