On June 27th, the Korea Consumer Agency (www.kca.go.kr) held a seminar to celebrate its 26th birthday on the topic of “How do our consumers evaluate the Korean market ”
Prof. Sung-jin Cho (Economics at Seoul National Univ.) and Ms. Min-young Huh (head researcher from the Dept. of Consumer Policy Research) delivered a presentation on ‘Significance and necessity of consumers’ market evaluation’ and ‘Results of the consumer market evaluation’, respectively.
Experts from many different fields led active discussion during the seminar including Prof. Hee-suk Lee (Chungbuk Univ.), Prof. Won-moo Huh (Bukyung Univ.), Director Soo-bong Jeon (the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry), President Kil-ho Jeong (the Organization of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business), Editorial writer Young-kyu Song (the Seoul Economic Daily), Director Moo-jin Choi (Korea Fair Trade Commission) etc.
Especially, the Seminar focused on results of consumers’ evaluation on how much consumer-oriented the top 10 consumption market is performing in Korea based on adapted introduction of EU’s consumer market scoreboard (CMS) to Korea. Evaluation items include △Easy comparison of products and services, △Reliability, △Consumer problem, △Consumer complaints, △Satisfaction level, △Switching of providers, △Product safety, etc.
※ Top 10 Consumer Market (evaluated by consumers)
1. cars (new car) 6. garments
2. mobile telecommunication services 7. restaurants
3. coverage(life) insurances 8. meats
4. large-sized household appliances 9. oriental medicine
5. real estate agency services 10. tourist package (cross-border)
● Top 10 consumer markets were determined based on Household Survey Data and proportion of consumption expenditure to house income from the Korea National Statistical Office (NSO)
Meanwhile Ms. Huh from the KCA, who conducted the study of Consumer Market Evaluation Index, said "Korean consumers rated high on markets of cars, home appliances, and coverage insurance markets, while rating low on restaurant, mobile telecommunication services, and oriental medicine markets, when evaluating how consumer-oriented the market is." |