40% of App Market and Accommodation App Vendors Report "Unfair Trade Practices" Experience

Fair Trade Commission Conducts Survey... Highest Responses Indicate High Burden of Fees and Advertising Costs

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] It was found that 3 to 4 out of 10 application market and accommodation app tenants have experienced unfair trade practices by online platforms.

The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 2nd that this was revealed through a survey conducted on tenants in the accommodation app and app market sectors within the online platform field.

The rate of unfair trade practice experiences among tenants in the online platform market was 40% for app markets and 31.2% for accommodation apps.

The most common types of unfair trade practices in app markets were unclear app registration criteria and delays in the app registration process, accounting for 23.6%. This was followed by unreasonable discrimination against large corporations (21.2%), disadvantages caused by the use of proprietary payment systems, and rejection during app updates (20%). The experience rates of unfair trade practices by platform were highest for Apple App Store at 45.1%, followed by Google Google Play (39.9%) and One Store (26.8%).

In the case of accommodation apps, the most frequent response was that commissions and advertising fees were excessively high, followed by responses about market disruption caused by the issuance of discount coupons.

In particular, the majority of tenants felt burdened by the levels of commissions and advertising fees. The average commission borne by tenants was 10.6% for accommodation apps and 20-30% for app markets. 80% of accommodation app tenants and 80.8% of app market tenants responded that the commission levels were high.

The burden of advertising costs was also significant. 84.5% of accommodation app tenants reported feeling burdened by advertising fees. The most common response, accounting for 29%, was spending 1 to 2 million KRW per month on advertising. In app markets, 22.8% of businesses reported having paid advertising fees to be featured at the top of the screen. The average monthly advertising costs per app were 14.02 million KRW for Google Play, 5.85 million KRW for the App Store, and 2.72 million KRW for One Store.

As solutions to eradicate unfair trade practices, 47% of app market respondents favored the disclosure of clear criteria for exposure ranking, followed by improvement of the market’s monopolistic structure (46%), strong government regulation through legal application (40%), and the introduction of dispute resolution systems (27%). For accommodation apps, 56.4% responded that the monopolistic market structure should be improved, the highest proportion, followed by strong government regulation through legal application (32.1%) and investigation and disclosure of commission rates and advertising standards (17.9%).

A Fair Trade Commission official stated, "Based on the results of this survey, we will strengthen monitoring of unfair practices in app markets and accommodation apps," and added, "We will strive to ensure the prompt passage of the Online Platform Fairness Act currently pending in the National Assembly."

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