Date
2012.12.27
Lotte Duty Free, South Korea's largest duty-free shop by sales, will open an online store to cater to a growing number of Chinese visitors to the country, company officials said Thursday.
The affiliate of South Korea's largest retailer Lotte Group will start operating on Friday a Chinese version of its online store at http://cn.lottedfs.com where Chinese consumers can buy duty free products, the officials said.
The opening of the new Web site is aimed at meeting the increasing demand of Chinese shoppers in South Korea, the company said.
In order to better serve Chinese customers, Lotte Duty Free has struck a deal with Alipay, the operator of China's leading third-party online payment system.
The system will allow shoppers in China to easily pay on the Internet in yuan, the Chinese currency.
Lotte Duty Free's new site will sell 5,000 products ranging from cosmetics to bags. It will also have a specific Web page dedicated to Korean-made products.
Chinese consumers will be able to shop online from home before traveling to South Korea and then pick up the products on exiting the peninsula.
In the first 10 months of this year, a total of 2.44 million Chinese visited South Korea, up 29.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The growing number of foreign tourists has also helped generate revenue for South Korean retailers such as Lotte Duty Free.
Chinese tourists are estimated to have spent 270 billion won (US$252 million) in South Korea during China's week-long national holiday in October. South Korean officials said a boom in the "Korean Wave," known as "hallyu," in China has helped boost the number of Chinese tourists to South Korea.