Social commerce website visitors more than double

The number of social commerce users has more than doubled over the past year with the rising popularity of smartphones and social networking services, a survey said on Wednesday.

In the evaluation conducted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on trends in internet usage, the number of social commerce site visitors rose to an average of 11.54 million people per month in 2011, up from 5.14 million people per month in 2010, it said.

The monthly average visitor figures for online shopping malls owned by big chain supermarkets and open markets also increased 38.5 percent and 13.1 percent, respectively, during the same period.

The survey, jointly conducted with Rankey.com, analyzed the visitor data of 17,000 online shopping malls.

Among the social commerce site visitors, 42.3 percent were in their 30s, followed by those in their 20s with 34.7, it said.

The Korea Communications Commission announced earlier that the number of smartphone owners ― which enables better access to the sites and encourages the use of SNS ― has recently topped the 20 million mark in Korea.

The survey also found that most visitors browsed through social commerce sites during their work hours. About 27 percent logged onto the social commerce sites from 9 a.m. to noon, while another 20 percent did so from 12-3 p.m. and 17 percent from 3-6 p.m.

The most representative social commerce sites in Korea are Coupang, Ticket Monster and Groupon Korea.

“Many people make use of the afternoon to connect to online shopping malls to purchase clothing, electronic goods and food, especially due to price comparison, but a large portion of social commerce users visit the sites earlier in the morning since the discount items, which are available for a limited time and size, change daily, giving them higher expectations as well as anxiety,” said an industry source.

On a related front, another government report showed Wednesday that the country’s e-commerce sales jumped 18.2 percent in the third quarter.

According to Statistics Korea, online commerce totaled 244.24 trillion won ($213.3 billion) from July to September, up from 206.57 trillion won in the same period last year.

Online purchases, driven by business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer transactions, rose 16.3 percent to amount to 7.28 trillion won in the third quarter, it said.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)