Korea's retail sales gain 10.1% in May

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on June 28 that Korea's overall retail sales in May saw a year-on-year growth of 10.1 percent.

Both offline and online sales surged, up 9.3 percent and 11.0 percent, respectively.

The Ministry releases monthly retail sales figures based on surveys of 25 major retailers. Thirteen of them are physical retailers: three department store chains, three hypermarket chains, three convenience store chains, and four "super supermarket" (SSM) operators. The remaining 12 are online retailers.

By category, overall sales for fashion & miscellaneous goods (up 17.8 percent) and services & other (up 14.2 percent) expanded, with only an exception for home appliances.

The number of purchases (up 9.9 percent) hiked from increased department store purchases, but soaring prices of agriculture and livestock lowered overall unit price (down 0.5 percent).

By ratio, offline and sales stood at 51.8 percent and 48.2 percent, respectively. For offline, the share of department stores and convenience stores advanced by 1.6 and 0.3 percentage points, while hypermarkets and SSMs shrank by 1.8 and 0.4 percentage points, respectively.

Sales of brick-and-mortar stores increased for department stores (up 19.9 percent) and convenience stores (up 12.5 percent), whereas hypermarkets (down 3.0 percent) and SSMs (down 2.8 percent) decreased in sales.

Sales at hypermarket chains slid 3.0 percent as PCs, TVs and home interior items suffered in comparison to previous year's COVID base effect. Home appliances (down 9.7 percent) suffered a decline, also due to a rise in outdoor activities.

Those at department store chains leaped 19.9 percent as the number of visitors jumped (number of purchases up by 11.4 percent), thanks to lifting of social distancing. Miscellaneous (up 21.9 percent) goods, kids & sports fashion (up 30 percent), women's casual (up 25.3 percent), men's clothing (up 24.5 percent) all showed robust growth.

Convenience stores gained 12.5 percent in sales, owing to normalization of commute to work and schools, seeing an increase across most items, including food products (up 14.8 percent for processed, up 12.2 percent for instant foods).

Meanwhile, SSMs went down 2.8 percent in sales. Agricultural, livestock, seafood products (down 5.6 percent) and daily necessities (down 5.1 percent) experienced a drop. Only processed food products (up 1.7 percent) increased in sales.

Digital retailers posted year-on-year growth of 11.0 percent as all items gained in sales, led by sharp surges in cosmetic products (up 26.7 percent), processed food products and drinks (food products overall up by 17.7 percent). Reservations for travel and performance events shot up as well (services & other up by 17.6 percent).

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