Online shopping in Korea gains at fastest clip of 25% on year in Q2

Online shopping transactions in South Korea grew at the fastest pace in the April to June period from a year ago as online and mobile food and grocery shopping becomes a norm in Covid-19 environment.

According to the data from Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the value of online shopping transactions totaled 46.9 trillion won ($41 billion) from April to June, up 25.1 percent from last year.

It is the sharpest on-year gain since the data became available in 2001.

Online shopping grew 22 percent on year in the first quarter after showing around 10 percent or above quarterly gains last year.

¡°The online shopping market keeps getting bigger and the growth is stimulated by the Covid-19 pandemic,¡± said Lee Min-kyung, head of service industry trend team at Statistics Korea.

Online shopping accounted for 28.1 percent in total retail sales in the second quarter, up 2.5 percentage points from the previous year.

Online purchases of food and beverage products increased 34.4 percent. Those of agriculture, livestock and fishery products rose 34.2 percent and food services like food delivery 58.7 percent.

Online shopping for car and car accessories soared 105.2 percent, the steepest pace in history.

Travel and transportation services and culture and leisure services that had been hit hard by the pandemic last year gained 43.4 percent and 61.3 percent, respectively.

Food services took up the largest share of 13 percent of total online transactions, followed by food and beverage products at 12.7 percent and consumer electronics and telecommunication devices 11.3 percent.

In June alone, online shopping volume reached 15.6 trillion won, up 23.5 percent from last year.

Mobile shopping jumped 32.4 percent from a year ago to 33.3 trillion won from April to June, and the figure increased 30.1 percent to 10.99 trillion won in June alone.

Mobile-based shopping represented 70.2 percent of the entire online retail, up 3.5 percentage points on year.

[¨Ï Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]