Naver Launches Pilot Operation of 'Commerce Solution Market' to Enhance Competitiveness of Small and Medium Businesses

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver is launching a pilot operation of the ‘Commerce Solution Market’ to expand the capabilities of small and medium-sized merchants.

On the 27th, Naver announced that by opening the ‘Commerce Solution Market,’ it will support small and medium-sized merchants who have started businesses through Smart Store to directly utilize solutions incorporating new technologies to enhance their business capabilities.

So far, Naver has provided advanced technologies to small and medium-sized merchants to support easy online startups and growth. Representative examples include not only the various technical tools of ‘Smart Store,’ which helps build free online stores, but also ‘Shopping Live,’ which has established itself as a new marketing and sales solution in the contactless economy, and ‘NFA (NAVER Fulfillment Alliance),’ which helps merchants focus solely on their business without worrying about logistics.

Starting beta service on the 26th, the ‘Commerce Solution Market’ gathers and offers related solutions so that sellers can solve the efforts and difficulties required at each stage of their business through technology. In particular, by building a collaborative model with internal and external developers and technology startups to discover excellent solutions, it also creates new growth opportunities for technology startups.

The ‘Commerce Solution Market’ is expected to enable small and medium-sized merchants, who previously had small business scales or found it difficult to have dedicated IT personnel, to easily utilize advanced technologies to improve their business competitiveness. By easily applying and managing sophisticated solutions incorporating AI technology or data analysis to Smart Store, businesses can operate more systematically and seize opportunities for sustainable growth in the fiercely competitive e-commerce environment.

For example, by using the ‘Clova Message Marketing’ solution equipped with AI targeting and AI message generation functions, merchants can increase marketing efficiency by informing target customers about news and benefits from their stores. The ‘Clova Live Chat’ solution, which analyzes frequently received customer inquiries to generate 1:1 personalized responses, helps busy sellers save time and effort to manage their businesses more efficiently.

The ‘Commerce Solution Market’ will start its beta service with about 10 solutions, and after opening, various solutions from technology startups that can enhance business efficiency at each stage of commerce?such as product management, marketing, order/payment, delivery/logistics, customer management, and business management?will be sequentially registered. All services will be provided free of charge during the beta service period in the first half of the year.

Additionally, through the ‘Commerce Solution Market,’ Naver focuses on helping third-party developers with innovative ideas and technological capabilities connect their solutions with small and medium-sized merchants and supports their growth.

Naver is cooperating with technology startups to discover solutions to be introduced in the ‘Commerce Solution Market,’ and plans to support the development environment by creating a developer-exclusive space within the market and providing open APIs within the year. Furthermore, through collaboration with Naver’s corporate accelerator D2SF (D2 Startup Factory), support for investment and growth will be strengthened.

Yoon Sook Lee, CEO of Naver Forest CIC, said, “In the future, we will build an ecosystem so that the solution marketplace can grow to provide various types of solutions not only to Smart Store or Brand Store sellers but to all online business operators.”