JUNE 16 (Reuters) — South Koreans went online in increasing numbers for their shopping in early June, an economist and online data showed amid the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in the country.
South Korean high street spending fell dramatically in the first week of June as fears over MERS kept shoppers at home, but online purchases rose, government estimates on June 10th showed.
South Korea’s health ministry reported four new cases of MERS on Tuesday (May 16), bringing the total to 154 and three more deaths, taking the death toll to 19 in an outbreak that began in May.
Noh Eun, mother of an eight-month-old baby, is one of many South Koreans turning to online shopping during the outbreak.
“I used to visit the market and buy groceries to make baby food. However, these days I go for online shopping, even for watermelon and sweet potato, after the MERS outbreak,” Noh said.
“I hope that the MERS situation will be resolved soon, so that I can go shopping with my baby with no worries,” Noh added.
South Korea’s largest hypermarket chain, E-Mart Co. Ltd, said online sales between June 1 to 11 had risen 63 percent year-on-year as people avoided stores, whilst No.2 Homeplus’s online sales between June 1 to 14 rose 50 percent.
One economist in Seoul said he expected the trend to continue while MERS was still a risk.
“The volume of sales in online malls for the last few weeks in June has increased between 30 to 50 percent. I expect that people will continue to prefer online market rather than off-line shopping, as the MERS situation seems to be ongoing,” South Korean economist at LG Economic Research Institute, Bae Min-keun, said.
Department store sales in the first week of June fell 25 percent from an average of the first two weeks of May, government data showed. Sales at discount stores fell 7.2 percent, but online purchases rose 3.2 percent.
First identified in humans in 2012, MERS is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered China’s deadly 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). There is no cure or vaccine.
