Today I went to the E-Mart in Kunsan City. E-Mart was Korea’s first major locally-owned mass retailer (it’s a lot like Wal-Mart). Its owners, the Shinsegae Group, better known for their upscale department stores, opened their first E-Mart discount store in November 1993, in the Dobong-gu district of Seoul. They now operate about 85 stores nationwide and several in China. E-mart stores are typically located near residential areas of major cities and usually draw customers in from a 10km radius. It has stayed competitive, expanding partly by converting parent Shinsegae’s department stores into discount outlets offering higher margins. It’s basically a two story department store with a grocery store (three stories, if you count the parking garage on the top floor). They had everything there! It was actually a pretty nice place. I didn’t buy anything, just looked around. I spent a lot of time in the grocery store looking at all the different Korean stuff. They had an amazing amount of seafood and more kimchi than I’ve ever seen! I ate in E-Mart. I had some Korean noodle dish that was very good; I could’ve had McDonalds…they were there, too!
After E-Mart, I drove up the road to the “dollar store” (the “won store”…everything was â‚©1,000), it was just like a typical American dollar store, except they had a little beverage stand in there where you could get coffee and juice.
Both were interesting, but I’m not much of a shopper. I just enjoyed the experience and seeing how another culture operated these familiar businesses.
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