Lotte Shopping Intensifies E-Commerce Drive with Integrated Website

Lotte Shopping Co. on Tuesday launched its integrated online shopping website Lotte ON, which would help it compete with major e-commerce operators.

With Lotte ON, the shopping giant integrated websites of its eight affiliates, including Lotte Home Shopping, Lotte Department Store, the electronics unit Himart, and Lotte Duty-Free.

The website will offer omnichannel services to customers, such as recommending items, by analyzing data of over 39 million customers based on its artificial intelligence technology.

"There is no e-commerce operator in the country that integrates customer data of both online and offline channels," said Cho Young-jae, a Lotte Shopping official in charge of the e-commerce business.

Lotte Shopping's customers account for 76 percent of the country's population of 51 million.

Lotte Shopping, which operates South Korea's biggest department store and hypermarket chains, exhibited poor earnings last year as it was hounded by competition from e-commerce players.

The company had announced that it would eventually "reset" all of its brick-and-mortar shops for full-fledged synergy and had created a blueprint that will eventually transform the retail company into a service provider.

Lotte Shopping is among many traditional retailers in South Korea that have announced restructuring measures due to competition from online stores.

The retail giant's net losses expanded to 853.5 billion won last year from 464.9 billion won in 2018.

Operating profits slumped to 427.9 billion won from 597 billion won during the same period, while sales went down to 17.6 trillion won from 17.8 trillion won.