Korea Consumer Agency Releases 'Consumer Market Evaluation Index' Survey
Early Morning Delivery and Health Functional Foods Rank High in Consumer Ratings
Marriage Services and School Uniforms Among the Lowest Rated Markets
It has been found that among major domestic markets, "early morning delivery" services received the highest consumer ratings. In contrast, "marriage services" were evaluated the lowest by consumers.
On June 10, the Korea Consumer Agency announced the results of the "2024 Consumer Market Evaluation Index," which assesses how consumer-oriented individual markets are. Based on a survey of 1,000 samples for each of the 40 markets, the average consumer orientation score across all markets was 65.7 out of 100. Among these, the "early morning delivery" market received the highest score at 71.8 points, while the "marriage services" market recorded the lowest at 50.4 points.
The level of consumer orientation is divided into reliability, price fairness, availability of choices, and consumer complaints or damages. The score is calculated as a weighted average of these four survey items, with a maximum of 100 points. The higher the score, the better the consumer evaluation of the market.
The top five markets in terms of consumer evaluation scores were "early morning delivery," "health functional foods," "household chemical products," "general hospital treatment," and "airline services." Among these, the early morning delivery market received the highest scores for both reliability and price fairness out of all 40 markets.
On the other hand, the five markets with the lowest consumer evaluation scores were "marriage services," "school uniforms," "home repair and interior," "animal hospitals," and "postnatal care services." The "animal hospital" and "marriage services" sectors received the lowest evaluations for price fairness, indicating that many consumers felt the prices offered by businesses were not reasonable. The "postnatal care services," "home repair and interior," and "school uniforms" sectors were found to be markets where it is difficult for consumers to compare or choose among different businesses.
In particular, the marriage services sector scored the lowest for price fairness at 44.7 points. During the information search stage, 85.4% of consumers found it difficult to obtain price information, and at the contract stage, 83.2% experienced unexpected additional costs. At the service usage stage, 78.1% were encouraged to pay in cash. Additionally, 71.2% of consumers responded that price displays for wedding-related services such as studios, dresses, and makeup (so-called "Sdeume") were generally insufficient.
The school uniform market was found to have low availability of choices. Consumers paid 36.4% more than the expected price when purchasing school uniforms, compared to a 22.3% premium across all markets. Furthermore, 44.6% of consumers cited "monopoly or oligopoly" as the cause of the price increase.
A representative from the Korea Consumer Agency stated, "We will publish the results of this survey on the Korea Consumer Agency website and provide them to relevant ministries as reference materials for institutional improvement," adding, "For the marriage services market, which ranked lowest in consumer orientation, we will conduct an in-depth study and propose policy improvement measures based on the findings."
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