Healthy Food Tops Most Frequently Purchased Items List
Koreans spent US$3,753.76 million (about 4.5 trillion won) on cross-border shopping in 2020, according to data submitted by the Korea Customs Service to the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee on Oct. 11. Compared to US$1,622.28 million in 2016, the purchase amount swelled 2.3 times.
The purchase amount during the first eight months of this year already reached US$2,921.81 million. If the current trend is maintained, Korea’s cross-border shopping purchases will hit an all-time high again in 2021. This year, Koreans’ cross-border shopping purchase amount is expected to surpass that of 2020 as big shopping events such as China's Guanggun Jie and America’s Black Friday come at the end of the year.
There are two main reasons for the rapid growth of Koreans’ cross-border shopping. First, it is cheaper to buy goods directly from overseas internet shopping malls than to buy them in Korea. According to an annual survey of Korean cross-border shoppers by the Korea Consumer Agency, more than three-quarters (75.2 percent in 2020) of the surveyed people said that they enjoyed cross-border shopping because prices were cheaper than in Korea.
In addition, they said that they could buy products not sold in Korea. Some of them said that they used cross-border shopping when they could not find products they used in foreign counties while studying or traveling. Cross-border shopping also offers various options and wide selections.
Healthy food is the most popular product among Korean cross-border shoppers. Since 2016, healthy food has never lost first place in the cross-border shopping item standings. In 2020, the number of cross-border purchases of healthy food stood at 12,348,000 (US$746.4 million).
Cross-border home appliance purchases show a sharp rise. In 2020, the number of cross-border home appliance purchases hit 10.341,000, nearly nine times higher than that of four years ago (1,174,000). The total value of home applinace purchases reached US$422 million in 2020, up 3.4 times over the same period of 2019.
Negative side effects of cross-border shopping has also increased. The number of consumer damage cases from sales cancellations, refunds and illegal sales of medicines has sharply increased.
The Korea Customs Service estimates that 12.21 million Korean people purchased goods through cross-border shopping in 2020. The annual purchase amount per person stood at US$312.