Korean-Style Benchmarking Brings Fresh Air

Korea Macro, the name of Wall Mart's Seoul affiliate, has been showing off its unique skill in sales and marketing to the Korean marketplace.
Macro recently abondoned its membership system and will now offer discounts to non-members at its super stores. This has increased sales on individual items as the store has also moved away from exclusively selling items in bulk.
It also massively reduced the amount of goods and products it was offering and instead increased the variety of food products offered.
A source from Wall Mart said, 'Although we are proud to be the best in the world in terms of wholesale marketing, we searched for a special niche in Korea for the past six months to complement our superior service.'
As foreign groups spread their influence in Korea, the benchmarking of Korean management style is evolving.
Because Korea contains a very unique style and tradition in business, external groups are aware that to conquer the Korean market they must find a suitable combination of Western and Korean ways as fast as possible.
In one example, American Citibank employees visited the Hotel Shilla last month for four days to learn more about Korea's style of customer service.
Hwashik Bong : trojans@joongang.co.kr