Korea Black Friday is partial success

By Park Si-soo

The ambitiously launched Korean version of Black Friday appears to have been a partial success, because it did prompt people to spend, but that was eclipsed by news of deceptive deals and related complaints.

Ten major online shopping malls made their products available at up to 50 percent discounts on Friday, a rare coordinated move inspired by the original Black Friday, a term referring to the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. that has grown into a four-day, Christmas shopping sales event during which an estimated $50.9 billion was spent this year.

The companies ㅡ 11ST, Lotte.com, elLotte, AK Mall, HyundaiHmall, CJ Mall, Himark, Lotte Super, Galleria and SPAO ㅡ received an avalanche of orders on the day, so many that some found their websites shut down due to excessive traffic.

The company that initiated the event, 11ST, had a record high number of single-day transactions, generating eight times as much traffic as it had the previous Friday. The combined sales of the 10 online shopping malls were estimated at 150 billion won, according to combined data from the companies.

But not everything went well.

Many shoppers were upset over what they called “broken promises.”

Unlike earlier pledges to set no limit in the number of affected products, several shopping malls were accused of selling only a limited number of products and issuing a limited number of 50 percent discount coupons. As a result, popular items were sold out in the first few minutes after they went on sale. Some malls were caught setting the discount limit at 10,000 won.

“I was duped by the shopping malls,” said Byun Soo-hyun, an office worker in her early 30s. “I thought I would be able to buy anything at anytime. But the product I wanted to buy was sold out very early in the morning.”

Organizers said the demand for electronics devices was particularly high _ half-priced iPhone6s at 11ST were sold out in just two minutes. Some 200 half-priced iPads at CJ Mall were sold out in less than one hour.

“There were many mistakes we made,” said Park Joon-hyung, a marketing director of 11ST. “It was an inaugural event of this kind. Everything will be better next year.”