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The South Korean online food delivery industry has undergone rapid growth for the past two years amid the increasing popularity of delivery apps.

According to data on 2019 e-commerce trends released by Statistics Korea on Feb. 5, online transactions amounted to 134.583 trillion won (US$114.06 billion) last year, representing an increase of 18.3% from 113.7297 trillion won (US$96.39 billion) the year before. This was the country’s largest volume of e-commerce since the government began collecting relevant data in 2001. Food service transactions such as chicken and pizza deliveries amounted to 9.7365 trillion won (US$8.25 billion), up by 84.6% from 5.2731 trillion won (US$4.47 billion) the year before. Transactions in 2018 were themselves up 93% from 2.7325 trillion won (US$2.32 billion) in 2017 -- indicating a trend of nearly twofold growth for two straight years.

S. Korea's 2019 e-commerce volume

Amid a boom in late-night deliveries, online beverage and grocery purchasing amounted to 13.2859 trillion won (US$11.26 billion), or an 26.1% increase from the previous year. Produce, meat, and seafood purchases were also up by 19.5%. Online coupon services such as Gifticon experienced a 57.6% increase to 3.324 trillion won (US$2.82 billion), while “miscellaneous services” -- a category that includes various rental and cleaning services -- rose 34.4% to 1.1149 trillion won (US$945.1 million). The categories of appliances/electronics/communications equipment (14.4449 trillion won, or US$12.24 billion) and cosmetics (12.2986 trillion won, or US$10.43 billion) also showed respective rises of 24.6% and 25%.

Mobile shopping transactions by the so-called “thumb generation” (referring to tech-savvy users of mobile technology) were calculated at 86.7005 trillion won (US$73.49 billion), rising by 25.5% from the year before and accounting for 64.4% of all online shopping.

Direct online purchases from overseas totaled 3.6355 trillion won (US$3.08 billion) last year, an increase of 22.3% from 2018. Relatively large increases were observed for the beverage/grocery (36.3%), office supply/stationery (36.3%), and clothing/fashion (30.1%) categories; declines were observed for computers and peripherals (-6.4%) and produce/meat/seafood (-22.7%).

Amid a boycott campaign in response to Japanese export control measures, direct online purchasing of Japanese products stood at 48 billion won (US$40.69 million) during the fourth quarter of last year (October to December), representing a decline of 11.2% from the same period in 2018. This marked the first drop since related statistics were first compiled in 2014.

By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter

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