Gmarket, a major South Korean ecommerce platform owned by Shinsegae Group, plans to invest 700 billion won (US$492 million) next year after a new joint venture with Alibaba International.
The company said 500 billion won (US$350.4 million) will support existing sellers, while 20 billion won (US$14 million) will go to new sellers and small- and medium-sized enterprises, a 50% rise from the previous year.
Gmarket will also spend 100 billion won (US$70 million) each on consumer promotions and developing AI, with plans to begin developing a multimodal search feature for personalized recommendations in 2026.
The company currently ranks fifth in Korea’s ecommerce market by monthly active users.
Gmarket distributes 20 million products from Korean sellers to 160 million customers in Southeast Asia through Lazada, Alibaba’s regional subsidiary.
It plans further expansion into South Asia, Southern Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, focusing on K-branded goods and leveraging Alibaba’s global network.
🔗 Source: The Korea Times
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Gmarket 2024 gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $6.46 billion makes the 700 billion won investment equal about 8% of flagship site GMV
- Flagship-site GMV reached US$6.462 billion in 2024 1. The planned 700 billion won for next year, about US$492 million, equals roughly 8% of that tally. The company logged operating losses of 165 billion won over the past three years 2.
- A 1 trillion won GMV goal within five years sits far below today’s scale. Total reached about 13 trillion won in 2024 2. Coupang reached about 60 trillion won that year 2.
- Its commission based open market model (a marketplace where third party sellers list products and Gmarket earns a commission) yields revenue equal to about 7% of GMV 2. Recognized revenue was 961.2 billion won in 2024, well below marketplace volume 2.
Multimodal emotion detecting search will trigger Korean biometric and visual data compliance work for Gmarket
- A planned multimodal (handling multiple input types) search that reads users’ emotions raises compliance issues under South Korea’s updated personal information protection framework. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) 2025 plan covers visual plus biometric data with specialized legislation that stresses proportionality with privacy enhancing technologies 3.
- Vendors of privacy enhancing tech, consent tools, and machine learning (ML) governance may see more demand as Gmarket performs privacy impact assessments with post-implementation inspections 3. Firms offering emotion recognition compliance should match PIPC’s risk matrix for AI driven surveillance use cases 3.
- Regulatory technology vendors can stand out by aligning products with PIPC’s Guidelines for Personal Data Processing for Generative AI 4. The guidelines set legal bases and require records of safeguards, risk checks, multi layer safety controls 4.
