Asia’s retail industry has been consistently evolving to meet the ever-changing consumer needs and expectations. For market players, the key to success lies in how well they understand and adapt to the changing market environment. In the second report of our Asia Retail Country Report Series – What’s New and What’s Next in South Korea Retail, we provide you with the major retail facts and latest trends in South Korea’s retail sector.

Key highlights

South Korea’s retail market has long been dominated by three major local players, namely Lotte, Shinsegae and Hyundai, which are renowned for their popular department stores in hot shopping venues across the country and have been aggressively expanding their businesses and store networks to vie for the bigger pie in the market.

In 2017, the country suffered economic backlash from China amid the THAAD crisis; the retail market, especially the tourism, beauty & cosmetics and entertainment sectors, inevitably underwent drastic final setbacks during the period. Nevertheless, with both China and South Korea agreeing to mend the bilateral tie in November 2017, the retail market is expected to pick up steam in 2018, with major market players gearing up for the retail boom.

The steep hike in hourly minimum wages for 2018 has prompted local retailers to trial unmanned operations, harnessing cutting-edge technology like biometric authentication solutions to launch cashierless stores. Considering the highly tech-savvy customers base in the country, local players have also launched smart shopping services to make shopping more enjoyable and convenient for consumers. With the fairly high smartphone penetration and usage rates in the country, m-commerce sales have continued to experience robust sales growth, taking up over half of the total B2C sales in South Korea. The burgeoning m-commerce growth has also fueled the growth of mobile wallets in the country. Increasing numbers of retailers have made their way into the m-commerce market by introducing mobile payment services.