Naver to lead hyper-personalized shopping trends with super app

Naver Corp., South Korea's largest internet portal, will launch an AI-driven shopping app in the first half of 2025 to boost its lackluster e-commerce business in line with hyper-personalized shopping trends, its chief executive said on Friday.

Its CEO Choi Soo-yeon said on an earnings call that it will roll out the super app, dubbed Naver Plus Store, to offer shopping recommendations and information such as promotions tailored to users’ preferences and needs.

“It will differentiate itself from other platforms with customized services for individual users,” said Choi.

She is pinning hopes on the AI-based shopping app becoming a new growth engine. 

LOGISTICS SERVICE

Naver is considering teaming up with other companies to reduce delivery time and transport products on weekends to catch up with the country’s No. 1 e-commerce platform Coupang Inc.

Coupang has aggressively expanded its presence, particularly in the daily necessities segment, with the same or next-day delivery service dubbed Rocket Delivery.

Industry officials said Naver would offer quick-delivery service to its members paying 4,900 won a month.

Coupang’s Rocket Delivery is provided only to its paid members. It charges 7,890 won a month for the service.

GENERATIVE AI MOBILE APP

Naver will also release a mobile search app based on generative AI in 2025.

Choi said the app will be able to summarize search results tailored to users' needs in a service called AI briefing.

It will later evolve into a multi-modal, or machine learning model, to process information from images, voices and text. In September 2023, Naver introduced the generative AI chatbot Cue: for personal computers, based on its HyperCLOVA X AI platform.

Naver will also offer AI-based hyper-personalized services to its map and real estate data users.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.