Shinsegae, Lotte capitalize on baseball to enhance market presence
Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin takes a photo in his seat during the baseball match between SSG Landers and Lotte Giants at SSG Landers Field in Incheon, April 4. Yonhap
By Kim Jae-heun
Only three months after Shinsegae acquired SK Telecom's professional baseball team SK Wyverns and rebranded it as SSG Landers, the retail giant is making good use of the team in marketing campaigns to improve the performance of its main retail business.
On March 30, Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin publicly targeted longtime rival Lotte Shopping on social media platform Clubhouse saying “they will have to bite the bullet to catch us.”
Chung's comment could be interpreted as not a denouncement of Lotte Shopping but rather as a marketing tactic to seek a win-win strategy for both firms. Lotte also reacted by putting an online banner on its combined shopping platform Lotte ON with a written message: “We will quietly meet SSG.com in the away game and defeat them.” Here, Lotte was referring to its baseball team Lotte Giants' game against SSG Landers on April 4. The match ended with the Landers beating the Giants 5 to 3.
Shinsegae and Lotte Shopping have been strong rivals in the domestic retail market for years. However, with the emergence of e-commerce giants like Coupang and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Shinsegae and Lotte Shopping faced unprecedented declines in their offline business performances.
Chung wanted to increase its presence again in the retail market by creating noise with Lotte.
He put his words into action immediately. Chung said in a Clubhouse chat room that “SSG.com may lose to Lotte but it will not defeat us in terms of marketing.” Celebrating the Landers' first match under its new name in the Korean Baseball Organization league, Shinsegae's e-commerce unit SSG.com launched large-scale discount events called “Landers Day” and “Landers Week.”
Lotte Shopping also released a press release saying it will start a month-long big sale promotion. This is the first time that Lotte Shopping has offered a discount promotion in collaboration with Lotte Giants.
The marketing strategy utilizing their professional baseball teams has been proving right.
During Landers Day between April 1 and 4 which focused mainly on the sale of meat items, E-mart's sales coming from domestic beef skyrocketed by 133.3 percent, year-on-year.
“They competed against each other by providing benefits to customers and it has attained satisfactory results for us,” an E-mart official said.
Lotte Shopping's supermarket brand Lotte Mart also saw its sales soar in the wine and egg sectors by 104.8 percent and 101.4 percent, respectively, between April 2 and 4 compared to the same period in the previous year.
Chung's intention behind creating this buzz in the market is to take back attention from Coupang and Naver that have grown to be major players in the local retail industry.
Combining last year's gross merchandise value (GMV) of SSG.com and Lotte ON did not reach even half Coupang's GMV, which stands at 21.7 trillion won. SSG.com and Lotte ON's 2020 GMVs were 3.9 trillion won and 7.6 trillion won, respectively.