South Korean retailers are moving beyond simply displaying and selling products, building up content commerce that leads with things to watch — videos, entertainment programs, concerts and short-form clips. The ways they use content are also diversifying, from platforms producing short-form videos themselves to combining entertainment and concert intellectual property with shopping.
Coupang plans to produce short-form content introducing sellers' products itself starting next month, according to the retail industry on the 14th. Coupang has until now supported the distribution of content created by Coupang Partners, including influencers, expanding product sales tied to short-form clips. From next month, it will extend its business beyond content distribution into production.
The push into video content emerged earlier in the home shopping sector. GS Shop launched Short Pick, the home shopping industry's first short-form service, in late 2023 and has continued to upgrade the combination of video and commerce. In the early stages, a single staff member produced an average of six short-form clips a day, but after artificial intelligence was introduced in October last year, output rose to as many as 15 a day. As of June this year, GS Shop had more than 1,700 active Short Pick clips. Lotte Homeshopping is also producing content through its short-form service, Shotping.
CJ OnStyle is seeking to differentiate itself with entertainment-style content such as concerts. The company produces concert and entertainment content in collaboration with figures including the hip-hop duo Dynamic Duo and lecturer Kim Chang-ok, then repackages it into short-form clips to draw in customers and lift product sales at the same time. In the first half of this year, more than 3 million mobile products were ordered through short-form content on CJ OnStyle. Unique visitors to its mobile app coming from outside short-form platforms rose 2.7-fold from a year earlier, while mobile order value increased 3.2-fold.
Retailers are expanding their use of short-form content because it is easy to produce and can convey a product's features intuitively in a short time. That allows them to expose products to consumers who had no plans to buy, creating new demand. Future Market Insights, a global market research firm, forecast that the shoppable short-video market will grow to $379.5 billion in 2036 from $65.2 billion last year.
An industry official said the sector is evolving toward drawing customer interest through fields such as K-pop, entertainment programs, characters and sports, and through creators, and then converting that interest into purchases.
