ed Insulting Korean consumers
There is no quantitative or qualitative way of comparing the purchasing habits of consumers around the world but there is every indication that Koreans are smart buyers.
Over the past couple of years, Korean consumers have been engaging in what is called “direct purchasing” since buying foreign products on the Internet is considerably cheaper than getting them here.
Naturally, many also waited for “Black Friday”, which is the Friday following
Thanksgiving Day in the United States
(the last Thursday in November).
Since the early 2000s, it has been regarded as the beginning of the
in the U.S., and most major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon open very early and offer promotional sales
Having seen its success, 10 online retailers in Korea introduced their own version on Dec. 12 amid great anticipation from local customers.
The sellers included 11th Street and Lotte.com, who promised up to 70-percent discounts on popular brand merchandise.
When trading actually began, however, consumers were left disappointed. On 11th Street, pricey Canada Goose products were on sale at half the price, but only 35 products were available and were completely sold out after six minutes and 48 seconds. Similarly, only 101 scarves from Paul Smith were available and they were gone in less than three minutes.
This continued all day long as servers were halted time and time again due to heavy traffic as the online retailers were only concerned about the fact that so many consumers clicked on their website.
The hoax was simple. The online retailers were using Korean Black Friday as a ploy to attract consumers onto their websites.
Perhaps this is understandable from their perspective since figures show that Black Friday is losing its luster even in its home country of the United States.
Compiled figures show that this year, $50.9 billion was spent during the four-day Black Friday weekend, down 11 percent from last year, while approximately 133 million U.S. consumers shopped during the same period, down 5.2 percent from last year's 141 million.
The main reason why this is happening is that boundaries in shopping are disappearing and even patriotic American consumers are heading to foreign markets on the Internet to catch the best buys.
It is the same with Korean consumers. They are getting smarter and smarter and they know how to access the best products at the most competitive prices.
Despite this reality, Korean online retailers are resorting to shallow scams to maintain their customer portfolio, while they should be dedicating their time to developing ideas of how best to serve their clients.
They have been boasting that they sold 150 billion won worth of products on Korean Black Friday, way past the original target of 100 billion won.
That may be true, but now that their customers have discovered what they have been up to, they will have to brace themselves for what happens next.