Jung Yong-jin and Lee Hae-jin's 'Surprise Meeting'... Shinsegae-Naver Discuss Online and Offline Collaboration

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] Shinsegae Group, the number one offline retail market leader in Korea, is joining hands with Naver, the number one online retail leader.

According to both companies, on the 28th, Chung Yong-jin, Vice Chairman of Shinsegae Group, visited Naver's headquarters in Bundang, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, and met with Lee Hae-jin, Naver's Global Investment Officer (GIO), to discuss cooperation plans between the two companies. Also present were Kang Hee-seok, CEO of E-Mart, and Han Seong-sook, CEO of Naver.

A Shinsegae official stated, "Since both Shinsegae Group and Naver share the commonality of operating in both retail and online businesses, we had a comprehensive discussion to see if there are areas where we can cooperate to create synergy," adding, "The specific ways we will collaborate will be discussed in detail later."

In the retail industry, this meeting between Vice Chairman Chung and GIO Lee is seen as potentially leading to a major transformation in the domestic online and offline retail market if cooperation between Naver and Shinsegae proceeds. Combining the online and offline channels of the two companies is expected to generate enormous synergy effects that are incomparable to other competitors, from product sourcing to distribution.

For example, Shinsegae can expand its sales channels through Naver Smart Store. There are also talks about online platform and content partnerships to enhance the competitiveness of SSG.com, which is already pushing for a transition to an open market. For Naver, which mediates online transactions rather than directly purchasing and selling products, this could be an opportunity to secure a large amount of retail content such as Shinsegae's products.

Previously, in October last year, Naver formed a partnership with CJ Logistics, the number one logistics company, through a stock exchange, and on the 21st of this month, it signed a business agreement with BGF Retail, which operates the convenience store CU, to promote an online-to-offline (O2O) platform business.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.