Lotte Shopping Vice Chairman Kang Hee-tae is holding a general shareholders’ meeting held at the Lotte Retail Academy conference hall on the 6th floor of Lotte Big Market, Yeongdeungpo on the 23rd.
“Lotte Shopping has restructured in many ways, but it is ineffective and a new breakthrough is needed. As rivals Naver and Shinsegae are allied to dominate the e-commerce market, Lotte is struggling without measures.”
On the 23rd, a shareholder made a remark at the Lotte Shopping Shareholders’ Meeting held at 10 am, the venue of the Lotte Retail Academy on the 6th floor of the Lotte Big Market, Yeongdeungpo Branch. He pointed out that Lotte Shopping is not responding properly amid the urgent competition in the e-commerce market recently.
Shareholder Lee also asked, “Where was your old fame and wasn’t it wrong with the trend of the times?” “What plans do you have in order to overcome these difficulties?”
Lotte Shopping Vice Chairman Kang Hee-tae, who held the general shareholders’ meeting as the chairman of the board of directors, said, “Last year, it was not a normal business environment due to Corona 19.” They are responding more sensitively to the trend of the times than anyone else.”
Lotte Shopping, together with Shinsegae, is receiving a lot of attention as to whether it can make a soft landing in the online market as a powerhouse in traditional offline distribution. With the advent of Coupang, the e-commerce market is growing rapidly, and concerns about the erosion of the offline distribution market are also emerging.
Both Shinsegae and Lotte are still in the early stages of entering the e-commerce market, but different evaluations are coming out in the industry. While Shinsegae is building a fresh food platform image by launching SSG.com, Lotte’s sales have declined since Lotte On was launched. According to the Lotte Shopping 2020 Business Report, last year’s e-commerce sales amounted to 137.9 billion won, a 27.4% decrease from 189.9 billion won last year.
In particular, Shinsegae recently formed an alliance with Naver through a stake exchange and actively participated in the e-commerce market.
Accordingly, a question was raised at the site on that day, asking if Lotte Temperature is planning to create a separate corporation like Shinsegae. Another shareholder asked, “Does Lotte have any plans to separate it into a separate corporation like SSG.com?”
Lotte explained that it is targeting the e-commerce market with a strategy different from that of Shinsegae. Vice Chairman Kang said, “Lotteon merged with Lotte Shopping from the dot-com corporation in 2018. It was invested through a merger with Lotte Shopping, a distribution center of the Lotte Group, and merged for business synergy.” He added, “We will be faithful to the purpose of the merger in the first place, and we are proceeding with a different strategy from Shinsegae.”