Building Bridges and Expressing Authenticity

VERTICAL

Fashion & Apparel

USE CASE

Market Expansion

Region

South Korea

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SM Global Shop, the official online store for SM Entertainment fashion merchandise, partners with SM Entertainment to offer official K-Pop apparel and accessories, spreading Korean culture worldwide.

Stats

3.6x

Loyalty Member AOV

2.5x

orders from Loyalty Members

13,000+

Reviews Generated

30x

Growth in Customers

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About

K-pop is a cultural and social phenomenon that has emerged in recent years and has attracted millions of fans worldwide. Some of the most popular bands have reached levels of popularity comparable to the world’s top-performing artists. As a result, demand for official K-pop merchandise is at an all-time high with countless brands buying into the trend. SM Global with the help of Growave has quickly built a reputation as one of the most trusted sources of K-pop merchandise and has grown like wildfire as a result.

Challenge

The massive demand for K-pop related merchandise is holding strong and SM Global's biggest challenge was establishing itself as a leader in the market. They were battling competition on all fronts and needed ways to build an authentic brand. Communicating reliability and aligning themselves with the industry were main priorities. You can find K-pop merchandise on nearly every e-commerce platform and in countless stores, SM Global’s goal was to officiate their relationship with the hottest K-pop bands. Since there is no singular representative of K-pop merchandise, it was a challenge to create an authentic image. They needed to foster a positive reputation, and so they focused on user-generated content and finding loyal customers.With the help fo Growave they successfully created strong customer trust and retention. Their next goal was to expand their market reach. Since K-pop is a socially driven industry that’s largely fueled by its fans, their community and social inclusion was a must. They needed to make customers feel accepted while also leveraging their engagement to expand their platform.

Solution

SM Global looked to create a loyalty program that would encourage customers to remain loyal to their brand. With the help of Growave they implemented more than 15 different ways to earn points which kept customers engaged with their store. These rewards allowed them to leverage user interaction to help scale their e-commerce store. These rewards e also encourage customers to revisit their store and even increased their average order value.

Rewards in exchange for feedback helped SM Global accelerate their collection of reviews while also enhancing product descriptions. This boosted trust in the brand and paved a path towards recognition by the K-pop community. Their reviews also included images that gave customers realistic glimpse of the products they were interested in.SM Global also needed to keep shoppers coming back because that's how they managed to accumulate so many congruent customer.. That meant a customer base that continued to grow, a community of enthusiastic fans, and rewards that could scale their e-commerce store through customer interactions. They used automated emails to keep in touch with loyalty members and re-market their products.Once SM Global earned their customer’s trust and established their brand identity. It was time to leverage their community. They began focusing on rewarding customer actions like social media engagement, which had the effect of broadening their reach. By utilizing user-generated content like photos, they were able to perfectly align themselves with the K-pop fanbase and expand their reach like wildfire.