SEOUL, KOREA - With the Chuseok holiday season coming close at hand, the sales of gift sets grew sharply at department stores but remained sluggish at discount stores.
Unlike department stores which have many corporate clients, discount stores are heavily dependenton individual consumers who are more sensitive to the current economic recession.The sales of gift sets at Korea’s three major department stores thatbegan in earnest from August 22 marked a robust growth.
Lotte Department Store, for example, enjoyed a 32-percent growth in sales of gift sets as of August 31, while Hyundai Department Store posted a 24.7-percent growth. Shinsegae Department Store also recorded a healthy growth of 17.1 percent.
In contrast, such sales at discount stores remained sluggish. E-Mart, for example, which launched the sales of Chuseok gift sets from August 25, marked a 0.3-percent growth in gift set sales as of September 1.