After some turbulent times because of Covid-19, Korean shoppers prefer spending money from their devices than in their stores.
The active shopping via the internet of households is likely to contribute much to the gross domestic product of South Korea in terms of increasing production and reducing the inventories of local manufacturers. The situation Covid-19 has presented has made households expand their online shopping by relatively deucing on-the-spot consumption at department stores, discount chains and restaurants.
According to Statistics Korea, monthly online shopping transactions reached US$13.49bn in April 2021 (the latest available figure). That figure has posted growth of 67.1 per cent over the past three years, from US$7.9bn in April 2018. On an on-year basis, the monthly turnover surged by more than US$2.6bn, from US$10.6bn in April 2020. The all-time high in history was posted in March 2021 at US$14bn.
The surge in online spending has been backed by systematic parcel delivery services, which send products to consumers nationwide in one to three days, or even in less than 10 hours in some urban areas.
