tradeKorea

KITA Suggested Strategies to Prepare for E-Commerce amid Keen Interest among Export Beginner

-KITA co-hosted a business meeting on export marketing to develop overseas online market with Google and eBay-

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The Korea International Trade Association (Chairman, Han Duck-soo) co-hosted “Business Meeting on Strategies for E-Commerce and Online Marketing” with Google headquarters at COEX in Samseong-dong on October, 21. KITA introduced its overseas marketing supporting service for B2B e-market place tradeKorea.com and the B2C shopping mall Kmall24 that are run by KITA. Also, the staffs at Google and eBay, who have the best specialists in search engine and global shopping mall fields, participated in the event as speakers and shared their know-how gained from their hands on experiences. The overseas marketing specialists and webmasters from some-300 domestic market-oriented companies, who try to export for the first time, as well as small and medium manufacturers took part in the event.

Seok, In-hyuk, an engineer at Google headquarters, came to Korea to participate in the meeting said “In order to be exposed to the overseas buyers through search engines, it is critical to construct text-oriented contents rather than the images to enable search robots’ normal collection of information.” He also explained “Companies should be careful to use too much images or flashes because it could take a long time for loading depending on the different internet access conditions in different countries. Also, some mobile devices do not support the programs for moving images.”

It is time for Korean companies to actively utilize the online exports via the open markets such as eBay, Amazon, Tmall, etc as they have many advantages, for example, less inventory burden, a variety of feedback from consumers, easier improvement of product competitiveness through rapid environmental analysis and so on. Bae Jin-woo, manager of Global Business Development Department at eBay Korea, said “Over seventy percent of Korean exporters who sell products through eBay rely on fashion and electronic items.” He urged “Since various products ranging from household items to machine parts are traded in B2C shopping malls, Korean exporters of other products need to aggressively search for new opportunities.”  

Meanwhile, a specialist at the Korean Intellectual Property Office took part in the meeting as a speaker in order to effectively respond to the copyright issues that are becoming ever more important and introduced the dispute cases and support measures. In addition, the Korea Customs Service provided an opportunity for the exporters to expand their knowledge about the simplified export declaration system for e-commerce by explaining the simple way to declare exports and its benefits when companies conduct overseas sales through B2C.

Son Tae-kyu, executive managing director of e-Biz Services Group of KITA said “It is time for the domestic market-oriented companies and the export beginners to pay attention to online exports and aggressively prepare for them as the portion of online transactions in trade is expanding.” He noted “KITA will continue to offer opportunities for Korean small and medium exporters to expand their knowledge about the online overseas marketing strategy and the overall e-commerce through seminars and business meetings.”