People take photos of Shinsegae Department Store building in Seoul, on Dec. 26. Korea Times file

By Kim Jae-heun

Shinsegae, along with other traditional retailers, has been preparing to attract customers for its year-end sale prior to Christmas Eve. However, the government's adoption of its "Living with COVID-19" policy raised the number of virus infection cases to new all-time highs and the outbreak of the Omicron variant have brought the country back under the highest level of quarantine measures.

Shinsegae took immediate action to change the platform to online, where it can create synergy with newly acquired eBay Korea.

From the first day of 2022, Shinsegae will open a joint sale promotion with Gmarket and Auction, two e-commerce platforms operated by eBay Korea. Here, online fashion platform W Concept will take part to attract young customers.

SSG.com, Shinsegae's e-commerce service, will give 10,000 won in return for purchasing certain amounts of items from grocery retail affiliate, E-mart. Gmarket and Auction will offer e-coupons for specific categories of products on a daily basis and W Concept, too, will issue discount e-coupons.

Apart from its efforts to make up for anticipated losses on the traditional marketplace, another reason why Shinsegae is beefing up its collaborations with online platforms is to consolidate its presence in the e-commerce scene.

As of the end of last year, SSG.com's market share was only at 3 percent. Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin made a bold decision to take over eBay Korea, which accounted for a 12 percent share of the domestic online shopping market. The deal catapulted Shinsegae instantly to third place beating Coupang which has a 13 percent market share. On top of that, acquiring W Concept, which collects a number of next-generation fashion brands on its platform, helped Shinsegae jump into the fashion sector that Coupang has yet to enter.

In addition, Shinsegae's supermarket brand E-mart will focus on giving out point rewards to attract online consumers.

Lotte Group, a longtime main retail rival of Shinsegae, is beefing up its online shopping business centering on its e-commerce platform, Lotte ON. Lotte Group's retail unit, Lotte Shopping, promised to reward a maximum 10 percent of points for purchased prices on Lotte ON during the promotion period.

"We have prepared the online sale event to wrap up the year amid strengthening social distancing measures," a Lotte ON official said.

Hyundai Department Store is taking different steps. It will focus on offline sales, selling gift sets to celebrate the year end and New Year's.

The retailer will give discounts for more than 80 popular gift sets and deliver them for free within 5 kilometers of stores if a customer has spent a certain amount of money.

"Due to the prolonged social distancing, we have planned this event to help our customers share their love with gifts," a Hyundai Department Store official said.