In March 2025, Naver is ambitiously launching the ‘Naver Plus Store’ as a standalone app. This news is more than just the addition of another app. It’s Naver’s first step in building its shopping business into a new platform business called ‘Commerce’. It signals an evolution away from the price comparison and need-based shopping we’re used to, towards ‘discovery shopping’ where you can browse for fun and find new products. Naver is pouring in its AI and big data technologies to maximize personalized shopping experiences. With global giants also eyeing the personalized, AI-powered shopping market, Naver is making a bold move.
🧩 Why a Standalone App? Uncovering the Hidden Strategy
Breaking Free from the Super-App Mold, Giving Wings to Personalization
At the ‘Naver Commerce Study’ event held at Naver’s 1784 headquarters, Seo Myung-won, Director of Commerce Design at Naver, stated, “The Naver platform itself was too heavy to deliver personalized recommendation experiences.” In simpler terms, the Naver app is so packed with various features that it was too cumbersome to implement a personalized service optimized solely for shopping. While it’s a slightly different approach from the ‘super-app’ strategy of trying to encompass everything like KakaoTalk, Toss, or WeChat, it can be seen as a direct and focused tactic to achieve the clear goal of ‘hyper-personalized shopping.‘
Serendipitous Finds! The Allure of Discovery Shopping
Naver Plus Store is different from shopping where you search for the lowest price on something you already know you want. Like a treasure hunt, it aims to provide the joy of unexpected discoveries – finding something you “must have!” while exploring personalized recommendations and engaging content. The goal is to encourage users to spend time in the app without a specific purchase in mind. You can feel Naver’s ambition to leverage its vast data to deliver shopping experiences perfectly tailored to individual tastes and contexts.
Head-to-Head with Coupang, The Battle for E-commerce Dominance
The launch of Naver Plus Store can also be interpreted as a move to surpass Coupang, the dominant player in the Korean e-commerce market. According to data from the Fair Trade Commission in July 2023, Naver and Coupang are neck and neck with market shares of 24.5% and 23.3% respectively. Naver is using this opportunity to solidify its market dominance with differentiated shopping experiences and enhanced services. In particular, to counter Coupang’s strength in fast delivery, they are preparing a new logistics service called ‘Just Arrived Delivery’ (지금배송). The standalone app launch can be seen as a declaration of war.
🚀 How Will Naver Plus Store Take Flight?
AI-Powered Personalized Shopping: AI That Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself
The core of Naver Plus Store is, without a doubt, providing AI-based hyper-personalized shopping experiences. AI precisely analyzes user search history, purchase patterns, and interests to recommend customized products, benefits, and content. It doesn’t just look at data; it comprehensively considers review ratings, coupons, membership benefits, and preferred brands to create a shopping experience that is ‘truly’ for you. For example, even when searching for the same keyword ‘wrist support,’ the system differentiates whether you are interested in ‘fitness equipment’ or ‘baby/childcare products’ based on your search history and displays relevant products accordingly.
‘AI Shopping Guide’: Your Shopping Problem Solver is Here
The ‘AI Shopping Guide’ feature, launching in beta alongside the app, is also worth noting. AI provides various information related to product purchases and acts as a smart shopping assistant that recommends the best products tailored to user types and situations. Although still in its early stages, Naver plans to further develop this feature beyond simple product recommendations into a ‘shopping navigator’ that assists the entire purchase decision process.
UGC Power: 3 Billion Blog Posts Enriching Shopping
Naver’s hidden weapon is the vast amount of content and data accumulated from user-generated content (UGC) platforms like Knowledge iN, blogs, cafes, and Clips. With a staggering 3 billion blog posts and over 5 billion experiences and interest-based posts, it’s truly immense. Naver plans to selectively utilize commerce-related content from this pool to further enrich the shopping experience. For example, when searching for camping chairs, instead of just showing product listings, relevant reviews, user feedback, and blog posts will be provided together, helping users obtain more in-depth information and make satisfying purchases. UGC can become a core competitive advantage that differentiates Naver Shopping.
Enhanced Membership Benefits: Maximizing Lock-In Effect
Naver is solidifying its shopping ecosystem through Naver Plus Membership. Through surprise ‘Membership Day’ events, they are pouring out various benefits such as additional points, cashback, and coupons, and are explosively increasing membership sign-ups by expanding partnerships with various companies like Netflix and SoCar. In fact, after the Netflix partnership, new subscriber sign-ups increased 1.5 times, and the Naver Shopping spending of new subscribers also increased by more than 30% compared to before joining. Data already proves the high customer loyalty of Naver Plus Membership. Such strong membership benefits will create a lock-in effect, firmly binding users to the Naver shopping ecosystem.
Delivery Innovation: ‘Right Now’ to Your Doorstep
Naver is also focusing on delivery service innovation. In March, they will newly launch ‘Naver Arrival Guarantee’ as ‘Naver Delivery’ and plan to segment Naver Delivery items into Today Delivery, Tomorrow Delivery, Sunday Delivery, and Desired Date Delivery to provide services to users. Today Delivery guarantees same-day arrival if a buyer orders a product between midnight and 11 AM. Tomorrow Delivery allows customers to receive products ordered between 11 AM and midnight the next day. Furthermore, Sunday Delivery guarantees Sunday arrival for orders placed between 11 AM Saturday and midnight. They are putting significant effort into delivery so that orders can be received quickly. It’s a strategy to compete with Coupang’s Rocket Delivery and Dawn Delivery with ‘time efficiency’. As delivery satisfaction increases purchase rates, it will be interesting to see what kind of impact Naver’s delivery innovation will have.
🖼️ The Future of Commerce Naver Envisions
Accelerating Commerce Growth
Naver aims to increase Smart Store transaction volume by more than 10% this year. The launch of Naver Plus Store is expected to play a key role in achieving this goal. In fact, with the increase in loyal customers after the launch of Naver Plus Store, commerce revenue in the fourth quarter of last year showed a remarkable 17.4% increase compared to the previous year. The commerce sector is now poised to become a core engine driving Naver’s growth.
Win-Win with Seller Ecosystem, Commerce Growing Together
Even while launching a standalone app, Naver is strengthening its Smart Store seller support policies. They are preparing various support programs to ensure that the current 700,000 Smart Store sellers can successfully settle into the new app environment and meet more customers. In particular, as they transition shopping services from search-based to recommendation-based, they have introduced a groundbreaking policy of abolishing traffic referral fees and switching to sales commissions. Seller-friendly policies such as free regular subscriptions, free N-Delivery, and commission reductions for Shopping Live and 1+1 deals are further activating the Naver commerce ecosystem and strengthening partners to grow together with sellers and increase e-commerce market share by gathering them into the Naver ecosystem.
AI Evolution, Opening the Future of Shopping Experiences
Naver Shopping’s AI technology is still in its early stages, but it will become even smarter in the future. Naver aims to advance AI assistant features within the next 1-2 years to develop them into ‘AI agents’ that can even autonomously perform actions such as actual purchases and reservations. A future where AI reduces the hassle of the shopping process and provides personalized shopping experiences is no longer just imagination.
✨ A New Chapter for Naver Shopping Begins
The launch of the Naver Plus Store standalone app is a move demonstrating Naver’s strong will to take the lead in the e-commerce market and provide differentiated hyper-personalized shopping experiences using AI technology. Can Naver’s ambitious plan to shift the online shopping landscape, which has been focused on price comparison and goal-oriented shopping, to a ‘discovery’ and ‘exploration’ centered model and open an era of personalized shopping succeed?