Lotte Department Store is accelerating efforts to capture Chinese tourists (“Youke”) by entering China’s major super-platform applications (apps).

Lotte Department Store announced on the 17th that, for the first time in the Korean retail industry, it will establish official channels on China’s largest platforms, “Gaode Map” and “Dianping.”

According to Lotte Department Store, Gaode Map is China’s No. 1 map app with about 1 billion monthly active users (MAU), while Dianping is the country’s largest review and lifestyle-sharing platform with more than 700 million users. Lotte Department Store plans to secure Chinese app users’ travel routes from before their arrival, targeting a combined 1.7 billion users on these local apps, and thereby solidify its position as a global shopping hub.

Lotte Department Store will launch its official channel on Gaode Map on the 18th. In particular, it is the only Korean retail company to obtain Gaode Map’s official verification tag, “Guanfang Ziying” (official self-operated), thereby securing the channel’s reliability and credibility. The company plans to use the dedicated “Shopping News” feature to deliver the latest event and brand information, and to provide optimized shopping content during users’ destination search process.

On the 25th, it will officially open its channel on Dianping. Lotte Department Store plans to intensively promote foreigner-focused campaigns such as “Global Shopping Week” timed to peak seasons for Chinese holiday travelers, including the Lunar New Year (Chunjie) period.

Park Sang-woo, Head of Marketing at Lotte Department Store, said, “As the travel trends of Chinese tourists are shifting around Chinese super apps, securing customer touchpoints even before their arrival has emerged as a key marketing element,” adding, “By operating official channels on China’s leading platforms, we will secure competitiveness in attracting Chinese tourists.”

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