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 tandem 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 the users’ preferences and needs.
“It will differentiate itself from other platforms with customized services for individual users,” said Choi.
She pins hopes on the AI-based shopping app as a new growth engine. It is being tested as an app of the Naver app.
LOGISTICS SERVICE
Naver is considering joining hands with other companies to reduce delivery time and transport products on weekends to play catch-up to 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, dubbed Rocket Delivery.
Industry officials said Naver would offer quick-delivery service to its membership users paying 4,900 won per month.
Coupang’s Rocket Delivery is provided only to its paid members. It charges 7,890 won per month for the delivery service.
GENERATIVE AI MOBILE APP
Naver will also release a mobile search app based on generative AI in 2025.
Choi said the mobile app will be able to summarize the search results tailored to users’ needs in a service called AI briefing.
It will evolve into a multi-modal, or machine learning model, to process information from images, voices and text. In September last year, it introduced the generative AI chatbot Cue:, for personal computers, based on its AI platform HyperCLOVA X.
Naver will also offer AI-based hyper-personalized services to its map and real estate data users.
By Ji-Eun Jeong
jeong@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.
