South Korea's Lotte.com online mall uses SAS to gain customer insight

By leveraging SAS for Customer Experience Analytics in an integrated online traffic system, Korean online shopping mall Lotte.com is learning more about customers and improving its targeted marketing efforts. SAS, a leader in business analytics software and services, offers a full portfolio of customer intelligence products to customers around the world.

"With SAS, we have laid a foundation for implementing sophisticated target marketing," said Son Jung-won, Lotte.com's marketing planning team manager. "Members receive tailored services that are a better fit for their lifestyle. In addition, we have developed an optimised page overlay function that measures the value of each page and section. Areas and items with low efficiency can be promptly revised to improve work efficiency for the company."

Analysing customer behaviour

SAS collects Web traffic data and accurately analyses the behaviour of online customers. Unlike conventional CRM functions that wait until customers place an order to identify buying intentions, the system is designed to analyse what customers see and do on Lotte.com's sites. The results supplement data about purchased products and services, and prompts Lotte.com to align service with customer demand.

Using SAS, the online mall analyses unique visitors, page views and additional data from the company's various websites to understand the status of visitors and purchasers, the popularity of each category and product, plus click-through patterns, campaign results and more. The company uses results to develop more sophisticated marketing campaigns that offer shoppers what they really want.

"As competition in the e-commerce sector intensifies, analysing customer behaviour on the Web has become critical to marketing," said Jin-kwon Lee, executive director of SAS Korea. "The structuring of highly advanced analysis techniques such as those used by Lotte.com puts the company ahead of its competition."

In addition to Lotte.com, other companies using SAS customer intelligence products include the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, HSBC, AXA (online insurance) and the People's Association of Singapore.

Lotte.com

Lotte.com was established in January 2000 and is a sophisticated networking portal providing both "bricks and clicks" on the Internet. The company's physical distribution network is virtually connected to the Internet, and it empowers exceptional efficiency in e-commerce marketing strategies and projects. With total capital assets of 23.3 billion KRW (US$20.6 billion [about R160.7 billion]), Lotte.com is one of the largest online shopping malls with 13 million members across 63 subsidiaries owned by the Lotte Group. It is one of the most accessed shopping portals in South Korea.