The Reason Why Amazon.com Doesn't Enter the Korean Market

Amazon.com is the biggest online shopping mall in the US.
eBay successfully took 70% of the Korean market for electronic commerce.
But such an achievement was possible only because eBay took over
such successful companies as Auction and G-market.
Another US company, Groupon took over Ticket Monster, which was showing
satisfactory results in the Korean market.

When Groupon entered the Korean market autonomously for the first time,
it was ranked in the 4th or 5th position, showing poor results.
But, after it took over Ticket Monster, the 2nd largest company in the field,
its market share increased rapidly and it became the 2nd largest company in the field.
Nevertheless, the 1st and the 2nd positions in the field of social shopping mall are still
being occupied by Korean companies.

As such, in order for Amazon.com to enter the Korean market successfully,
it would be better for the company to hire experts who are familiar with the Korean market
or acquire successful Korean companies in the market.
But Amazon.com has not even set its foot in the Korean market yet.
Korean people speak their own language. English is a foreign language for them.
They speak English only to respect the foreigners who speak English.
90% of those living in Korea speak Korean.
So books are written in Korean in the country, providing Amazon.com which possesses
and distributes a lot of books written in English with its first challenge.

Also, the level of distribution for books in Korea has already become world-class.
If you order books in the morning, you will get them in the afternoon on the same day.
Regarding books, it is quite difficult for US companies to become competitive in Korea.
Another limit which Amazon.com would experience is the poor level of contents.
Such simple and low-quality contents have been caused by the low-speed Internet
environment in the US where the Internet speed is 10 times slower than the one in Korea.
As a result, Amazon.com cannot help providing less contents used to introduce books.
If more contents are posted on the Internet, the loading speed will become slower.
But in Korea, some parts of books, including interviews with writers, writers' blogs
and various discount benefits, are shown in slides with the help of flash files.
Based on the fast Internet speed, the quantity and quality of contents have been improved.

The Korean Internet users do not usually get interested in the contents showing only texts or a couple of pictures like those of Amazon.com or Google.
If Korea had been in the position of the US,
it would have used the same technology to create Earth instead of Amazon.com.
But since English is used worldwide as a common language and the American market is
quite large, it has been possible for Amazon.com to grow.
That Amazon.com has not even set its foot in the Korean market yet.