With Lotte Home Shopping at the lead, five TV home shopping companies will start T commerce service as early as during the first half of the year. These companies are starting the service exactly ten years after they obtained the business right in 2005. T commerce market is forecast to expand as TV home shopping companies equipped with their own studios and video contents join the existing T commerce companies, such as KTH.

According to the industry on the 15th, Lotte Home Shopping will open T commerce broadcasting station next month and the other four home shopping companies, such as GS, CJ, Hyundai and NS, will open their own studios as early as during the first half of the year. Home & Shopping does not have T commerce business right.

Lotte Home Shopping has been preparing for T commerce business by organizing a team since six months ago. It will first provide the service through Olleh TV and then increase the service outlets gradually. As long as procedural issues, such as channel approval, are resolved successfully, the industry forecasts that Lotte Home Shopping will be able to open T commerce station next month. It has been confirmed that the other four home shopping companies have also set up T commerce teams around the end of last year and are preparing to start the service during the first half of this year.

The reason these companies plan to start T commerce service is because, not only this business has a growth potential, but also they are aiming to resolve a criticism that the entry barrier to TV home shopping channels is too high.

“T commerce is aimed at promoting public interest more than profits,” said a TV home shopping industry insider. “Companies that cannot be introduced in TV home shopping due to time limitations will be introduced through T commerce.” Lotte Home Shopping, which is to start T commerce service first, plans to lower the rate of sales commission charged to small businesses down to around 20% in order to promote joint growth with them. According to Fair Trade Commission, the average rate of sales commission charged to small businesses by six TV home shopping companies last year was as high as 34.4%.

TV home shopping companies’ entry to T commerce market is forecast to contribute to T commerce industry activation because these companies already have a considerable number of video contents on products and can also secure a large number of contents in a short period of time as they have their own studios. “Based on our broadcasting production experiences, we will produce and service a variety of interactive video contents that are specialized to T commerce,” said the TV home shopping industry insider. “Consumers will be able to receive T commerce service that has not been available so far.” Lotte Home Shopping plans to produce videos for all registered products by category.

TV home shopping companies need to be observed as to how active they will be about securing channels. This is because not only securing a gold number (channel neighboring terrestrial wave broadcasting) is not easy, but also it is burdensome for the companies to pay transmission charges while their profits in the initial phase of service are limited. TV home shopping companies are required to secure T commerce numbers in addition to their current numbers (channels).

T commerce is a data broadcasting service where consumers select a product using their TV remote controller and purchase the product by watching information displayed on TV. In 2005, five home shopping companies and five other companies including KTH obtained an approval for TV commerce business. KTH (Smart T Shopping) started the service for the first time in August 2012. Since then, i-Digital Home Shopping (Shopping & T) started T commerce service in October 2013 and Hwasung Industrial (Dream & Shopping) and SK Broadband (B Shopping) opened T commerce broadcasting stations last month.