In 2025, the sales revenue of e-commerce platform Coupang amounted to around trillion South Korean won. Coupang has quickly grown over the last few years and has, together with internet giant Naver, the largest share of the South Korean e-commerce market.
Coupang
Coupang is an online e-commerce platform that was founded in 2010. Like Amazon, Coupang does not only sell its own branded products but also operates as an online open marketplace through which other businesses can offer their goods on the platform. These businesses benefit from Coupang’s reach as a sales platform as well as its developed online services such as customer support. This has led to major sales growth of small businesses using Coupang as a platform. While Coupang’s number of users and sales revenue continues to rise, the company’s operating profit has been in the red ever since 2013, and it was recovering from its high losses in 2018.
Online shopping
South Korea is known for its fast internet connection and broad internet access. As this is the case, the internet shopping usage rate is rather high among the whole population. Besides popular categories, such as consumer electronics and fashion items, online grocery shopping has also become popular. Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, people liked to order online, resulting in the transaction value of groceries ordered online increasing notably.