Major South Korean retail groups including Lotte and Shinsegae are building their retail competitiveness around arts and culture. They have moved beyond displaying artworks in stores to group-level concerts and sponsorship of global art fairs. Notably, with leaders such as Lotte Chairman Dong-bin Shin and Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin personally overseeing these projects, the groups are positioning arts and culture as a core strategy for creating distinctive customer experiences and brand identity.
Lotte Group held the 2026 Lotte Summer Classic Concert on the 23rd at World Park in Lotte World Tower in Seoul's Songpa district, according to the retail industry on the 27th. The free performance, staged under the theme of a midsummer night of classical music in the city, featured conductor Jung Han-gyeol and the Ditto Chamber Orchestra and drew about 4,500 members of the public.
The concert drew particular attention after it emerged that Lotte Group Chairman Dong-bin Shin had first proposed it. During the planning stage, Shin is said to have stressed that Lotte World Tower should be reborn as a multi-purpose cultural space that gives back to society the value the tower holds. Shin's affection for classical music dates back a decade. He contributed 10 billion won of his personal funds when the Lotte Foundation for Arts was established in 2015 and served as its first chairman, and the following year he opened the Lotte Concert Hall, a venue dedicated to classical music, showing his sustained interest in the arts.
Shinsegae Group will set up the Shinsegae Lounge, a space exclusively for the group, at Frieze Seoul 2026, the international art fair running from the 2nd to the 5th of next month at COEX in Seoul's Gangnam district. The lounge brings together the expertise in art spaces and content planning that Shinsegae Group has accumulated. It will host a special exhibition spotlighting the work of French artist Paul Cox, unveiling for the first time worldwide 336 pieces from his Diary series, in which he recorded years of meditation in gouache.
Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin is said to have led the negotiations that resulted in the group becoming an official headline partner of Frieze Seoul 2026. The move is seen as reflecting Chung's management philosophy of going beyond selling goods to expand the time and experiences customers have in offline spaces, creating cultural venues in everyday life where people want to linger.
Hyundai Department Store will take part as an official partner for the fifth consecutive year in Kiaf SEOUL, the country's largest art fair, held at COEX from the 2nd to the 6th of next month. It will run a VIP lounge at the venue during the event, showing works by Korean craft artists Kang Suk-young and Jung So-yoon. It is also holding the exhibition BANKSY, STILL HERE at ALT.1, the large permanent exhibition space at The Hyundai Seoul.
Retailers are investing in combining arts and culture with retail to widen points of contact with customers and strengthen their brand images. Offering experiences that online shopping cannot easily replace brings customers into physical stores and can also drive related spending on food and beverages and shopping. The effect of such spaces shows up in how long customers stay. When Hyundai Department Store Group analyzed customer movement at The Hyundai Seoul earlier this year, customers spent an average of 37 minutes in Sounds Forest, the indoor green park at The Hyundai Seoul, about nine times longer than the average of four minutes at fashion brand stores.
The retail groups plan to expand these arts and culture projects over the medium to long term. Lotte will make the Summer Classic Concert, launched this year, a signature summer event and aims to increase the time customers spend around the Lotte Town area in Jamsil. Shinsegae Group will serve as a headline partner of Frieze Seoul for the next five years and continue to present arts and culture content that reflects the group's character.
"In the past, retailers' arts and culture projects amounted to simple sponsorship, but they are now evolving toward companies planning and developing content themselves," an official in the retail industry said. "Because this can offer customers distinctive experiences and raise brand images while also contributing to the arts ecosystem, related investment and collaboration will keep expanding."
