"Everyone Complained About Leaving, But Half of Online Shopping Is Still Coupang"

Naver, KakaoTalk, Instagram, Coupang, and YouTube Lead Their Respective Sectors

75.9% of Users Have Subscribed to E-Commerce Memberships

Last year, it was found that Coupang’s e-commerce market share surpassed 50%. The percentage of users who reported having subscribed to an e-commerce platform membership also exceeded 75%.

On June 3, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced the results of its 2025 Value-Added Telecommunications Service Survey, which included these findings. The Ministry has been publishing the results of this survey since 2021. This year’s survey was conducted between August 7 and November 28 of last year.

Ministry of Science and ICT logo. Ministry of Science and ICT

In a user behavior survey of 2,500 adults aged 19 to 69 nationwide, the following services had usage rates exceeding 90%: search (98.7%), messenger (98.5%), place·map (96.8%), e-commerce (95.6%), and video sharing (92.7%). When asked about daily usage frequency, messenger ranked highest at 91.3%, followed by search at 85.8%, and video sharing at 69.5%.

The most-used platforms by sector were: Naver (search portal, 67.5%), KakaoTalk (messenger, 92.5%), Instagram (SNS, 35.9%), Coupang (e-commerce, 53.6%), Google Play (app market, 64.6%), YouTube (video sharing, 78.0%), Baedal Minjok (food delivery, 50.6%), ChatGPT (generative AI, 68.1%), Naver Map (place, 50.7%), and Danggeun Market (secondhand trading, 88.3%).

For e-commerce, fast delivery and low prices were cited as the main factors in platform selection, while for food delivery, whether or not the user had a membership was a key factor. Notably, despite a major personal information leak at Coupang during the survey period, the company’s fast delivery services, such as Rocket Delivery, resulted in a lock-in effect for users.

In the past three months, the rate of users who used at least two platforms within a category was highest for e-commerce (83.9%), followed by SNS (79.9%) and search portals (76.9%). On average, users reported using more than three platforms for both e-commerce and SNS.

In 2024, value-added telecommunications service sales were estimated at 502.9 trillion won. Of this, sales from digital platform services amounted to 161.5 trillion won, accounting for 32.1% of the total value-added telecommunications revenue. The survey covered a total of 1,451 companies, including all businesses with domestic sales exceeding 100 billion won and those selected by sample survey.

Among the surveyed companies, 52.7% (765 companies) were digital platform operators. Of these, 68.2% provided two or more types of services. The types of services offered by these companies were: service provision (food delivery, travel/accommodation reservations, etc.), 30.9%; goods transactions (e-commerce, etc.), 27.1%; and content provision (search, games, etc.), 15.5%.

More than half of users had experience subscribing to online video service (OTT) or e-commerce memberships. In the survey of 2,500 adults, 53.9% (1,347 respondents) reported having subscribed to bundled OTT memberships. The proportion of users who had subscribed to e-commerce memberships was even higher at 75.9% (1,897 respondents). The most commonly used memberships were Coupang Wow, Naver Plus, Shinsegae Universe, and SK Telecom Woori Pass (11st, Gmarket), in that order.

A Ministry of Science and ICT official stated, "We will continue to provide timely data analyses that reflect market trends and develop effective policies to vitalize the value-added telecommunications market."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.