“South Korea B2C E-Commerce Sales Forecasts: 2015 to 2018”, a new report by a leading secondary market research firm yStats.com explores the perspectives of this major B2C E-Commerce market over the next few years. Among the predictions is that South Korea will continue to dominate in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of B2C E-Commerce share of total retail sales.
South Korea is one of the most attractive B2C E-Commerce markets worldwide, ranking in the top 10 by B2C E-Commerce sales globally and third in its region, after China and Japan. It is also one of the world’s leaders in mobile commerce, with one third of smartphone users making purchases on their devices at least once a week, as of last year. With triple-digit growth rates, M-Commerce’s share of online retail sales amounted to one third in 2014.
Overall B2C E-Commerce in South Korea is predicted to grow at lower rates than M-Commerce, but still ahead of below the 5% annual growth rate forecasted for total retail in the country in the next few years. Selected major primary sources concur on the average annual rate of around 10%. Due to high discrepancy in growth rates of total and online retail, the share of the latter is predicted to grow still further, already being the highest of the Asia’s top 3.
Among the companies prospering South Korea’s online shopping boom are merchants such as SK Planet, CJ O Shopping and GS Home Shopping. Also eBay retains a significant share of the online retail market and other foreign-based E-Commerce merchants benefit from the cross-border trend, with the number of orders from overseas increasing over the past few years.
