Discovery shopping gains traction in Korea

(CJ ONSTYLE)

Discovery shopping, a new trend where consumers purchase products while watching videos on over-the-top (OTT) and social media platforms, is gaining attention in South Korea.

According to industry sources on Tuesday, CJ ONSTYLE, the media commerce division under CJ ENM Co., began offering video shopping content on the short-form tab of online streaming service TVING in April.

Its order volume via TVING’s short-form tab surged nearly eightfold by June.

CJ ONSTYLE employs a strategy of posting short-form videos on external platforms such as TVING, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram to draw users into its own app.

The company saw its app traffic via external channels increase by as much as 3,602 percent in the first half of 2025, compared to the same period a year earlier.

In particular, CJ ONSTYLE stands out as the only platform in Korea that combines content, commerce, and proprietary products.

With over 150 dedicated producers, it boasts the largest content production team in the Korean retail industry.

CJ ONSTYLE’s mobile live commerce transaction volume is growing rapidly, exceeding the domestic market’s average annual growth rate of 30 percent.

Transactions nearly doubled from 165.3 billion won ($119.52 million) in 2023 to 323.2 billion won in 2024, and rose by 92.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025.

The industry expects the total transaction volume to reach 500 billion won by the end of the year.

CJ ONSTYLE also plans to actively target the influencer market in the second half of the year.

“In the digital consumption era, content that drives the desire to buy is the core of discovery shopping,” said a CJ ONSTYLE official. “The platform that seizes this trend will lead the next wave of retail.”

Live commerce continues to grow rapidly in Korea, while the e-commerce market has stagnated.

According to Statistics Korea, the country’s online shopping transactions in May totaled 22.49 trillion won, up 0.9 percent year-on-year.

This represents a significant slowdown compared to the 7.7 percent growth in May 2024.

Domestic live commerce sales in the first half of 2025, in the meantime, reached a record high of 896.2 billion won, according to Labangva Data Lab.

YouTube, another major force in the video space, is also entering the shopping market by leveraging its massive user base.

It partnered with Cafe24 Corp. in 2024 to launch a dedicated YouTube Shopping store, enabling even sellers without their own online stores to sell products directly through their YouTube channels.

YouTube Shopping‘s transaction volume is expected to grow from 100 billion won in 2024 to 500 billion won in 2025.

However, given that YouTube‘s in-house commerce capabilities are still limited, some view this phase as transitional.

Companies such as Coupang Inc. and CJ Olive Young Corp. have recently collaborated with YouTube to attract users to their own apps, further expanding the commerce ecosystem.

Naver Corp. is also increasing the share of shopping integrated with short-form video.

It launched Naver Shopping Live in 2020, allowing any registered seller to conduct live broadcasts using just a smartphone.

In 2025, it introduced a Discovery Tab in the Naver Plus Store app, enhancing artificial intelligence (AI)-based short-form recommendation features.