Lotte internet mall to open supermarket

Shopping at the neighborhood Lotte Super for daily groceries can now be conveniently done with a click of a mouse, while consumers can enjoy discounts and save on gasoline costs, Lotte Shopping Co.

The company said the opening of the virtual Lotte Super market on its online outlet, www.LotteiMall.com, would help households reduce spending during a time of global inflationary pressures due to soaring food and energy costs. Korea's consumer price index hit a seven-year high last month of 4.9 percent compared to a year ago.

Lotte Shopping said Lotte Super, which has a distribution network covering the whole country, will officially open on June 9 at 4 p.m. It will offer free home-delivery services on all purchases, meaning without the condition of having to spend a minimum, to households near a Lotte Super outlet.
There are 89 Lotte Super stores nationwide. The retailer said its online Lotte Super offers the same products and prices as the offline outlet.

"The number of online shoppers is growing during this time of soaring oil and consumer prices," Shin Jae-woo, a Lotte Home Shopping executive said. "We expect the addition of our online Lotte Super to make our internet mall more convenient to consumers."

The company said the addition of the supermarket creates synergy between its major retail lines -- department store, home shopping, online shopping, and discount super store, placing Lotte Shopping in a unique position in the local online market.

I think there is a high chance that the Lotte will dominate the whole shopping market. The one which succeeds is the one that takes a step forward a bit earlier that the competiting company. Acrroding to the article, you can order a mere bottle of water with free delivery. Who wouldn't use the service?

By Yoo Soh-jung

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/business

Entry 12

Chris Bang

Social Media Will Change Your Business

Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later

Editor's note: When we published "Blogs Will Change Your Business" in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didn't see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story. So we decided to update it. Over the past month, we've been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. We've placed fixes and updates into more than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story. First, the headline. Blogs were the heart of the story in 2005. But they're just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they've all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. Social Media: It's clunkier language than blogs, but we're not putting it on the cover anyway. We're just fixing it.

Monday 9:30 a.m. It's time for a frank talk. And no, it can't wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don't even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there's plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that's sick in our society today, and it's on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.
Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)
There's a little problem, though. Many of you don't visit blogs—or haven't since blogs became a sensation in last year's Presidential race. According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% Some newer numbers: According to Forrester, 11.2% of online adults in the U.S. publish a blog at least once a month. Of the same group, 24.8% read a blog and 13.7% comment on a blog at least once a month. The numbers are higher for youths. Of online youths, 20.8% publish a blog, 36.6% read a blog, and 26.4% comment on a blog at least once a month. But I suspect the numbers are unreliable because many mainstream sites with millions of readers—celebrity site TMZ and gadget sites like Gizmodo—are actually blogs. But are all the readers aware of this? I doubt it. This is the blurring of the blog/mainstream divide, a theme we'll see again and again in these revisions. of Internet users in America now bother to read them. So we're going to take you into the world of blogs by delivering this story—call it Blogs 101 for businesses—in the style of a blog. We're even sprinkling it with links. These are underlined words that, when clicked, carry readers of this story's online version to another Web page. This all may make for a strange experience, but it's the closest we can come to reaching out from the page, grabbing you by the collar, and shaking you into action.

First, a few numbers. There are some 9 million blogs out there, Yes, there were 9 million, but how many of them were active? Probably only a fraction. In early 2008, says Technorati Chairman David Sifry, the search company indexes 112 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones popping up each day. But only 11% of these blogs, he says, have posted within the past two months. That means the active universe is closer to 13 million blogs. Kevin Burton, CEO of FeedBlog, argues that the number should be lower, from 2 million to 4 million blogs. with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Some discuss poetry, others constitutional law. And, yes, many are plain silly. "Mommy tells me it may rain today. Oh Yucky Dee Doo," reads only one April Posting. Let's assume that 99.9% are equally off point. What we didn't see in early 2005 was the advent of the spam blog. These blogs, produced automatically, are designed to show up in search results and to attract Google advertisements known as Adsense. Sifry estimates that fully 99% of the blog posts reaching search engines are spam. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

by Stephen Baker and Heather Green
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252.htm

I think More and more, internet users are increasing. All over the world include Korea, most users have individual homepage. For example, facebook, cyworld and so on. blog also develop together. Now, business can’t ignore this trend. How to deal with blog, your business has a chance to success. We try to think about marketing by using blog.

entry 13
20700623
Min Kyu Jeong

Wal-Mart, Your Friendly Drugstore

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) wants to be your low-cost destination for not just food, clothing, and housewares, but also drugs and health care. In the past few months, Wal-Mart has announced it is working with several companies to process and pay their prescription claims. The company is aiming to increase electronic prescriptions at its stores by 400%, to 8 million by yearend. It is introducing walk-in clinics at its superstores to treat minor ailments and is expanding its $4 generic-drugs program. "What our company does best is exactly what the U.S. health-care system needs the most. It needs more affordability. It needs more accessibility. It needs to be more efficient," said H. Lee Scott, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, in a speech earlier this year.
Sound familiar? It's an echo of Wal-Mart's initial steps into the food business 20 years ago. Today, groceries are Wal-Mart's biggest revenue generator, making up 41% of its annual sales. Along the way, Wal-Mart has dramatically reshaped the grocery store industry. Now it's making a bid to do the same in health care.
The low-cost strategy is paying huge dividends for the world's largest retailer as it heads into its annual shareholders' meeting on June 6. At a time when Americans are being weighed down by record-high prices (BusinessWeek.com, 4/14/08) on everything from gasoline to milk, flour, and eggs, Wal-Mart's new slogan, "Save Money, Live Better," is resonating more strongly than ever for millions of consumers who have consolidated their shopping into one weekly trip to one of the chain's massive stores. That's why Wal-Mart shares are trading near a six-year high, at 57. "It's a strategy to get people to come in for different aspects of their life, but all at lower costs," says David Abella, a Wal-Mart shareholder and portfolio manager at New York's Rochdale Investments, which has $2.3 billion in assets.
Hefty Profit Generator
Already, Wal-Mart's drug and health-care ventures provide big chunks of its sales and profits. The chain says that health and wellness products (including pharmacy sales) made up 9% of its overall $374.5 billion in revenues in the 12 months ended Jan. 31, 2008. Analysts say the profitability of the health-care lines was better than Wal-Mart's overall 23.5% gross margin last year.
The investment in health care could pay even bigger dividends in coming decades. Health-care costs are expected to continue spiraling upward in the U.S., especially for the estimated 80 million baby boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1964. According to the Census Bureau, 300 people in America turn 60 every hour, and health-care spending averages $3,262 for those aged 55 to 64. That expense typically climbs 20% per year for those over 65.
"People are worried because health-care costs are growing faster than the average American's income, and it's only going to get more intense as boomers retire at an increasing pace," says Len Nichols, health-care economist at The New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute in Washington. Says Abella: "It is important to cement your health-care credentials as the leader of low-cost drugs at a time when baby boomers are getting older by the millions."
Unbeatable Prices
For two years now, Wal-Mart has been trying to do just that. It has shaken up the industry in the process. After it started offering a group of generic prescription drugs for $4 in September 2006, Target (TGT) and Costco Wholesale (COST) followed suit. Costco started offering $4 for a 30-day drug supply and then changed to $10 for a 100-day supply; now Wal-Mart has a similar offering.
Even at $4, generic drugs are not a loss leader at Wal-Mart. In its annual report, the company says that its gross margin increased in fiscal 2008 because of higher sales in fresh food and pharmacy. Rochdale's Abella says: "Wal-Mart might not be making the profits on $4 generics that drugstores were making, but generics have always had higher margins than branded drugs, and Wal-Mart is certainly not giving them away."
On May 5, Wal-Mart expanded its low-cost offering to cover women's medications to treat breast cancer, menopause, and hormone deficiency. For instance, alendronate, a generic version of the osteoporosis drug Fosamax, is being sold for $9 for a 30-day supply or $24 for a 90-day supply. That compares with $54 for a 30-day supply of the generic or $102 for the branded drug at pharmacy stores. The move should "help gain critical share across its female primary shoppers, and also drive traffic cross-shopping," wrote Adrianne Shapira, a retail analyst at Goldman Sachs (GS) who follows Wal-Mart, in a recent report.


Wal-Mart executives say their strategy is to tap into consumers who don't have health insurance. They say that nearly 30% of the $4 prescriptions are being filled without insurance, compared with the industry trend of 10%. "[The] $4 prescriptions now represent approximately 40% of all filled prescriptions at Wal-Mart," says John Agwunobi, Wal-Mart's senior vice-president and president of health and wellness. "People can now take the drugs that were prescribed to them. They no longer need to cut pills in half or not take the drugs at all."
Of course, the irony of Wal-Mart offering low-cost health care to those without insurance is not lost on its critics. Wal-Mart in recent years has come under heavy criticism for providing stingy health benefits for its own workers from various community and political leaders (BusinessWeek.com, 11/16/06) including Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.
Have-Nots on the Payroll
Just over three years ago, a few states singled out Wal-Mart as the employer whose employees were turning up most often on state Medicaid rolls and with children on taxpayer-funded public health-care plans. For instance, Georgia found that close to 10,000 children of Wal-Mart workers were enrolled in the state PeachCare program, nearly 14 times more than any other employer. In Florida, 12,300 Wal-Mart workers were enrolled in Medicaid.
Wal-Mart has since changed its health benefits plans. Last year, it offered lower deductibles in a range of choices and also reduced the number of years for a part-time worker to qualify for coverage to one year from two. At the start of this year, Wal-Mart said that 50.2% of its employees had signed up for coverage under the company's plan, compared with 48% in 2007 and 44% in 2003. In the latest enrollment period, more than 30,000 of the company's workers signed up for coverage who were uninsured before.
"Being the largest retail company in the world and such a market force, it just didn't look good to have so many employees with no insurance," says Rochdale's Abella. "Besides image, having better benefits makes it a more attractive place to work and reduces employee turnover."
Wal-Mart has proceeded cautiously so far on offering walk-in clinics, where people get treated for minor ailments like a cold or a cough for as little as $40. Currently, it has 79 clinics in 12 states, compared with 472 clinics in CVS (CVS) drug stores. In most cases, Wal-Mart leases out the space or has co-branded the clinics with companies like RediClinic. However, Wal-Mart has already committed to opening 400 clinics in the next three years, and could have 2,000 by 2015 by contracting with local hospitals.
Clinics Lead to Wider Sales
A report on industrywide walk-in clinics done for the nonprofit group California Healthcare Foundation by Mary Kate Scott, CEO of health-care consultant Scott & Co., found that they generally draw in young families on tight budgets or schedules, and that they lead to more sales elsewhere in the stores. "As many as 70% need a prescription or immunization, and 98% get their prescriptions filled right there," says Scott.
Patricia Edwards, a Wal-Mart shareholder and managing director at Seattle money manager Wentworth Hauser & Violich, says the clinics fall in the sweet spot of Wal-Mart's core low-income customer base. "So many of Wal-Mart's shopping population don't have health-care coverage, and here they can get their kids immunized for a low price. It's a good deal," she says. Indeed, Wal-Mart's own data show that 55% of its customers that go to these clinics are uninsured.
Investors are less enthusiastic, though, about Wal-Mart's moves into claims management. Earlier this year, CEO Scott revealed that Wal-Mart has also started dabbling in managing prescription drug claims for other companies. Scott believes he can leverage Wal-Mart's efficiencies of scale to better process and pay prescription claims from these employers. "Our approach will be based on taking out unnecessary costs while providing high-quality health-care products and services, and we believe we can save employers more than $100 million this year alone," he says. Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar wouldn't identify which companies Wal-Mart is working with.
Says money manager Edwards: "I hope they are cautious in any further undertaking in health care and don't push this too far."
In my opinion, as many countrys being an aging society, There are much demand of drugs and health-care. Moreover as baby boomers to be old man,over 60, those drugs and health-cares are needed for overall society. In the past time,However, drugs and other health-care services were too expensive to use for normal people especially consumers who don't have health insurance. But now, through Wal-Mart, people can buy drugs for pretty cheap price and this phenomenon is good for Wal-Mart, which took a lot of profit by cheap-food product. Now, Wal-Mart can expect to get a profit by not only food, clothes, but also drugs and health-care.

from http://www.businessweek.com/

20700658 Cho Dong-Soo
entry 13

Plastic Water Bottles: How many will just say No.

One thing has always, ALWAYS, been clear to me about the bottled water market. The market has been driven more by the inherent laziness of consumers than by any fear of the municipal water supply.
How ironic, considering all those people working out with bottles of water in their mitts.
The attraction is the handy size, and the fact that most of us are too absent minded to keep a reusable water bottle full of water in our briefcase, backpack or car. It is not because we doubt the quality of the water from our tap or the office cooler.
As public information mounts about the environmental havoc these ubiquitous bottles cause, companies who make huge profits on hand-held bottles of water are in a panic. Coca-Cola, Dannon, PepsiCo, Nestle.
Beverage Digest reports retail sales of bottled water (excluding vending machines and Walmart) grew only 9% this year compared with 16% in 2006. Explanations abound. For one, it seems people who are paying more for gas, mortgage payments and education are taking a harder look at how much they are paying for…water. It adds up, just like those lattes at Starbuck’s. But there does seem to be multiple factors eroding the growth of water, and one of those factors is the leading edge of green consumers choosing to refill water bottles instead of buying water.
According to water-filtration company Brita (owned by bleach giant Clorox), Americans discard 38 billion plastic water bottles per year, and it takes 1.5 billion barrels of oil to produce them.
Sounding just like the lobby it is, the International Bottled Water Association wants regulators and consumers to know that, before we get hysterical about water bottles, any attempt to regulate consumer packaging should address all categories, not just water bottles.
To which I say: why not start a new campaign with water bottles. Get people thinking about water bottles, and the thinking tends to spread to other parts of their lives.

In my opnion, As this selection said, People have inherent laziness, So they want more convenient shaped bottle, to grap for one hand. However many bottle of water are shaped pretty inconvenient and It would be waste of resources, and not efficent in market. Therefore markets of water are needed some reformed types their bottles of water.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2007/10/plastic_water_b.html

20700658 Cho Dong-Soo

entry 12

SKT's efforts to be Global

SK Telecom, Korea's No.1 mobile service provider, has appointed two foreigners as its human resources executives to help the carrier's efforts to attract global talents, its officials said yesterday.
SK Telecom said it plans to recruit more foreign executives as the company is striving to transform itself into a global firm. The company has been expanding into the United States, China and Vietnam to drive growth as the local market is nearing a saturation point.

This is the first time that SK Telecom appointed foreign executives in its Korean operation. It is also unsual that a Korean telecommunications company, which relies heavily on the local market, is recruiting foreign executives.

I think that these foreign veterans will help the company to draw more global talents and shape the corporate culture in such ways so that it is in line with that of a global company. SKT provides internship programs to the students from some American Business schools and also requires its employees to write all the reports in English as the means to transform the company into a global one.

I think SKT is stepping an important step which had not been done by any other companies in Korea. It is trying to increase the target market by being more global. This sudden change might be a stubling block for a while, however, it will soon translate into a stepping stone on which SkT would stand out among the competitors.

By Jin Hyun-joo

Source : http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/science

20700308 Chris Bang
Entry 11

LG Will Clean Up, With or Without GE

Korea's LG Electronics could win GE's appliances unit and get within reach of No. 1 Whirlpool. But LG's organic growth is noteworthy, too

The LG Total Capacity Refrigerator which has 15" LCD TV with FM radio, temperature adjustment, room temperature display, water controls, a weather & info center, recipes, digital photo album, calendar, BioShield Anti-Bacterial Seal and other features. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images


Ever since General Electric (GE) revealed plans to put its appliances business on the block May 16, Korea's LG Electronics has been on most everybody's short list as a potential buyer. While visiting Seoul on May 28, GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt further fueled the speculation by praising the Korean company as a potential buyer of GE Appliances. LG is "clearly one of the leading candidates," he said during his short visit. Calling LG "a great company," Immelt said "there are many things to be admired about a combination of LG and GE Appliances."


Best known as the maker of cheap microwave ovens and toasters a decade ago, LG has emerged as the world's No. 3 manufacturer of white goods after Whirlpool (WHR) and Electrolux (ELUX). It's also a top name in mobile phones (BusinessWeek.com, 4/30/08). It won't get GE Appliances without a fight, of course. Others on Immelt's list are China's Haier Group, Mexico's Controladora Mabe, Turkey's Arcelik and Stockholm-based Electrolux. Even if one of those other companies ultimately wins GE Appliances, LG is poised to challenge Whirlpool for the top spot in the global households business for years to come.


The Korean company has had the world No. 1 title in its sights for a while. Until Whirlpool took over Maytag in 2005, giving the Americans a big boost, LG had plans to seize the leadership in the industry by 2010. The Maytag deal put Whirlpool out of reach, but LG now could come close to realizing that ambition by acquiring the GE unit. LG's global appliances sales last year of $12.6 billion, when combined with GE's $7 billion or so, would roughly match Whirlpool's $19.4 billion and place it well ahead of Electrolux' $15.6 billion. "The GE unit will certainly whet LG's appetite," says Michael Min, electronics and tech specialist at fund manager Tempis Capital Management. "The question is pricing and terms."


In my opinion, LG grow up fast. LG electronics product famous for design, performance all over the world. LG have to upgrade their ability and quality to their brand value up. General Electronics and LG electronics help with each other. Now on they develop their capacity each brand to stand on the worldly brand.



http://www.businessweek.com/


entry 12
20700623
Min Kyu Jeong

Using Barter to Grow

Barter exchanges can help you build your business without spending a lot of cash.

Jake Kaestner wanted his five-person landscaping company to grow, but he didn't have much money to invest in the business. In 2005, after hearing about ITEX, a national barter exchange, Kaestner, founder of Kaestner Lawn Care in St. Peters, Mo., gave it a try. On barter exchanges, members earn barter dollars by doing work for each other. So Kaestner's $500,000 company did about $4,000 worth of landscaping at the home of another exchange member, a massage therapist. Kaestner turned around and used those barter dollars--currency good only between members of the exchange--to buy advertising in a local paper. "I didn't do any advertising before because it gets expensive," he says. Kaestner has since used barter dollars to buy advertising in local magazines, newspapers, and coupon books.
Whether by working through an exchange or directly with another company, bartering can help you boost your business without spending a lot of cash. Barter can be great for startups as well as for seasonal businesses or those with excess capacity.

I thought of my uncle whose company went bankrupt a couple of years ago. He used to earn a lot of money, however, at the moment he is broke. He was so depressed at first and didn't try to do anything. Then after a while he started a small business that didn't go well. He used to be a chairperson of a huge company so he didn't want to have his sleeves up and work from the beginning. I think what my uncle needed was something like 'barter' to develop his company even if it would have been slow. I think every good marketer should always be ready to do hard work If put in that kind of situation.

Back to BWSmallBiz April/May 2008 Table of Contents
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_64/s0804021853506.htm?chan=magazine+channel_bwsmallbiz+--+what+works'

Entry 10
20700308 Chris Bang