On September 28th, we had the honor to present an exceptional webinar organized by the French Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry about the impact of COVID-19 on Korea’s digital ecosystem and how to adapt your digital strategy to the New Normal in Korea.
In this article, we would like to share some of the insights shared during this webinar as well as answer some of the questions that arose.
The crisis we experienced during COVID-19 has fully changed the shopping and omnichannel experience. The economy will restart in a U, V, or W shape and uncertainty will still be part of our daily life. This uncertainty will deeply transform our habits. As the risk resides, consumers will continue to stay home longer, accelerating their shift to the digital world with greater demand for the type of services that we’ll need to develop in the future.
Today we are no longer wondering about whether the world will shift to digital but what brands should do to take this opportunity to answer to their clients’ and employees’ needs in this digital ecosystem.
For the last 6 months, a vast majority of the population has been participating in daily online activities such as working, watching news & movies, learning, training, or shopping on online platforms. These people make up the new norm. Today, we may define them not as Millennials or Gen Z, but as a new cross-generational identity: GenCo, a term coined by Asiance CEO Olivier Mouroux, which stands for Generation COVID-19 or Corona.
Until the beginning of this year, we have seen the market evolving at a very fast pace. Many of the changes that are happening now will extend into the post-COVID era.
We hope that this webinar will give you an overview of how to prepare for 2021.
We selected a few questions that arose among the audience and have shared our responses below.
You are mentioning that current online shopping still misses the in-depth experience that we expect when we are making a significant purchase. In that sense, techniques of the gaming industries could be more extensively used to enhance that experience, as by definition gaming is immersive. Do you receive more demands from companies, and do you think COVID-19 triggered the need to develop further this new style of marketing?
Chosun Ilbo gave a remark to the ‘New Challenge for beauty and fashion’ brands, saying that now brands must find ways to deliver the scent of their perfume through the smartphone display. The biggest challenge for beauty and fashion brands is that it has now become more inevitable to deliver the product’s features and benefits through an intangible way. Consumers now cannot experience the product before purchase, which is an important aspect for beauty products especially. But with that comes also an opportunity. We have seen that Byredo bypassed this problem with its innovative approach in delivery. We also saw that Basic House took this opportunity to entirely dedicate its sales focus to the online. So of course, there are the mentioned threats that those industries are facing, but the online opportunities also offer various innovative solutions to those problems. Might this not even be a time for B2C brands to reposition themselves and steer their business into a more future-oriented direction?
We also had some questions about the new normal. But what will happen after when COVID-19 will completely disappear from our life? How will the balance be between online and offline shopping?
Whether there was the COVID-19 pandemic happening or not, the world was shifting to online, where you can meet a lot more consumers at the same time period. For example, you can only contain 100 people at your pop-up store for 1-hour when you can sell over 1000 stocks during the same period at your e-commerce store. Now, offline will be a subsidiary where it helps the audience to directly interact with the brand rather than purchase.
What capability would be most necessary to adopt to the new normal in Korea?
In terms of capability regarding how companies can adapt to the new normal is to unlearn and relearn how their consumer behavior will impact their business, then unfortunately or fortunately most of the companies will need to reorganize themselves with the right talent to integrate these changes inside the company culture. Our experience shows us that during the digital transformation you need the right people at the right place first before starting the integration of new digital concepts. We are talking about a new generation of decision-makers, we are talking about digital specialists that will bring you to the next level. If you only try to bring in an outsource expert it will be very difficult for both parties to interact and you may lose a lot of time and money to develop your strategy.
Once the team is in place, you can look at open innovation platforms to accelerate your growth with the help of startups instead of reinventing concepts that already are on the market. You need someone that will be open to checking innovative ideas that can match your industry and work with them.
Watch the replay of the webinar: HERE
More information: FKCCI
Contact us: https://www.asiance.com/en/contact
