KOTRA to provide 'tailored' marketing

By Lee Hyo-sik

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) plans to implement country-specific marketing to help exporters more effectively boost their shipments, the head of the state-run export promoter said Tuesday.

In China and Southeast Asia, the agency plans to organize large-scale trade fairs using “hallyu,” or the Korean cultural wave, to promote a wide range of made-in-Korea goods for increasingly wealthy consumers there.

In the Middle East and South America, KOTRA will more actively engage with business people that showed an interest in doing business with Korean firms when President Park Geun-hye visited the two regions in the first half of the year.

In Japan, the agency will promote Korean products on the 50th anniversary of Korea-Japan diplomatic relations. It also will target the growing Latino population in the United States.

“In the second half of the year, KOTRA will introduce marketing programs tailored to each foreign market in order to help increase Korea’s outbound shipments,” KOTRA CEO Kim Jae-hong said. “The nation has seen both imports and exports decline over the past year because of sluggish global cross-border trade and low oil prices. Outbound shipments for August are widely expected to drop from a year earlier, which has happened for eight consecutive months now.”

Kim, who became the KOTRA head in January, said exporters will continue to struggle with a host of external negatives for the remainder of the year, including China’s slowing economy, the planned U.S. interest rate hike and falling commodity prices.

Against such a backdrop, KOTRA is ready to take the initiative in propelling Korea’s increasingly sagging export sector.

“KOTRA will mobilize all its 126 offices across the globe and come out with effective marketing strategies tailored for each foreign market,” Kim said. “In China, we plan to hold hallyu trade fairs in Shanghai and Tianjin in the latter half of the year to provide exporters with an opportunity to meet Chinese buyers. We will also cooperate with Alibaba and other online retailers there, encouraging them to market more made-in-Korea products.”

In the Middle East and South America, where President Park engaged in extensive “economic diplomacy” earlier this year, the CEO pledged to introduce measures to enable the President’s sales diplomacy to bear fruit.

“Arab and South American nations have been hit by falling crude prices over the past year, making it difficult for Korean companies to expand their presence there,” Kim said. “But we just cannot sit idle and do nothing. We should use the ongoing slump as an opportunity to form closer economic ties with them.”

KOTRA plans to invite a group of buyers from the Middle East and South America, and arrange a series of meetings with Korean exporters, Kim said, adding that the agency will send a group of government officials and private-sector businessmen to the regions in October.

“In particular, the international community’s lifting of economic sanctions on Iran could provide golden opportunities for domestic builders and other companies,” he said. “We will set up a support center at our headquarters in southern Seoul to offer advice to companies looking to enter the Middle Eastern nation. We will also hold trade fairs in Cuba to help open the door for local firms seeking to do business in the Caribbean nation.”

Kim also said KOTRA will organize various events in Japan to promote economic ties between the two countries. “We will also help local exporters go after the growing number of Hispanic consumers in the United States.”