Exclusive 'Secret Live Broadcast' for VIPs... Will Hyundai Home Shopping's Card Work?

Secret Show Held 1-3 Times Monthly
Deemed Loyal Customers Crucial Amid Industry Downturn
Order Amounts Up to 7 Times Higher Per Session

Hyundai Home Shopping has taken the “retaining premium customers (VIP)” card as a breakthrough to overcome its stagnant management situation. The strategy is to target VIPs, who have higher purchase amounts and conversion rates than regular customers, to maintain a stable source of income.

According to the industry on the 1st, Hyundai Home Shopping recently completed a pilot operation of the closed live commerce “Secret Shora” for VIP customers and started regular operations 1 to 3 times a month. While there has been a paid membership system that anyone can join by paying a membership fee, Hyundai Home Shopping is the first in the industry to select VIP customers based on a certain purchase amount and frequency. VIPs are members who have made more than 10 purchases within 6 months and whose order amount exceeds 1 million KRW. They can individually enter the broadcast through the “invitation” to Secret Shora sent monthly via mobile phone messages.

Hyundai Home Shopping 'Club Noblesse' broadcast screen
[Photo by Hyundai Home Shopping]

The background for Hyundai Home Shopping’s experiment lies in the sense of crisis caused by the industry downturn. In the second quarter, Hyundai Home Shopping’s operating profit on a consolidated basis was 17.7 billion KRW, down 36.4% from the same period last year, and sales during the same period fell 3.6% to 522.8 billion KRW. This was influenced by various external factors such as increased TV transmission fees and a decrease in viewers.

A Hyundai Home Shopping official said, “In the past, it was important to catch the ‘zapping tribe’ who switched TV channels frequently, but now, with the decrease in TV viewers, the internal judgment is that it is more important to stably maintain VIP customers who favor Hyundai Home Shopping,” adding, “It has become important to attract the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z) through new businesses such as YouTube and live commerce while protecting VIP customers.”

Secret Shora is showing meaningful results in terms of profitability. This is because it is basically composed of premium products with higher unit prices than general live commerce, such as resorts, gold jewelry, and imported kitchen appliances, and the broadcast structure targets VIP customers with high purchase rates. From March to September, when the pilot operation started, the purchase conversion rate of Secret Shora was more than twice that of general broadcasts, and the average order amount per broadcast was up to seven times higher. The number of Secret broadcast viewers and VIP customers is also on the rise. The average number of viewers for Secret broadcasts increased to up to 30,000, and the number of VIP customers from January to September this year increased by 32% compared to the same period last year.

Hyundai Home Shopping plans to diversify Secret Shora broadcast products across all categories in the future and strengthen efforts to secure loyal customers by preparing step-by-step benefits for “pre-premium customers,” who are one step before VIPs. Through the industry’s first VIP-only page built inside Hyundai H Mall, various benefits such as exclusive products and customer participation events will also be introduced.

A Hyundai Home Shopping official said, “We believe that securing a thick customer base with high trust in Hyundai Home Shopping and inducing loyalty among all customers will be effective in strengthening profitability in the mid to long term,” adding, “We will continue to aggressively promote focused care packages for VIP customers and induce an increase in average spending per customer.”