South Korea·Retail and e-commerce·2024–2025Naver Smartstore sellers
Effect of Naver's AI Shopping Guide on seller sales
After Naver added an AI shopping guide, small Smartstore sellers' revenue grew 16.5%, more than larger sellers'
Problem
Small online sellers rarely have the money or staff to build their own AI. Little evidence showed whether marketplace AI features helped them or which sellers gained most.
Approach
Naver built an "AI Shopping Guide" into its Naver Plus Store shopping app to help customers explore, compare and choose products. A team led by Professor Kim Tae-kyung of Kyung Hee University, publishing through Kookmin University's Platform SME Research Center, analysed about 44.67 million transactions from 8,149 Smartstore sellers of digital products between June 2024 and June 2025. Sellers were grouped by grade and sales size, and the analysis controlled for the economic slowdown.
Results
Takeaway
Small sellers recorded larger revenue and unit-sales gains than larger sellers after Naver added the AI Shopping Guide. VentureSquare did not report the study design, data access or funding.
Categories
- Size
- Small business
- Industry
- Retail and e-commerce
- Business function
- Marketing and sales
- Innovation type
- Product and service innovation
- AI technology
- Generative AIRecommendation and personalization
- Adoption
- Off-the-shelf tool or platform
- Evidence
- Independent study
Sources
- 국민대 플랫폼SME연구센터, 「커머스 플랫폼의 AI 고도화가 디지털 상공인 성과에 미치는 영향」 리포트 발간벤처스퀘어·8 Jan 2026News article
Source summaries
VentureSquare reports on a study from Kookmin University's Platform SME Research Center, led by a Kyung Hee University professor, of 8,149 Smartstore sellers and about 44.67 million transactions from June 2024 to June 2025. After Naver's AI Shopping Guide, revenue rose 16.5% for small sellers, 10.2% for mid-size and 6.7% for large ones, and unit sales rose 35.9%, 11.4% and 5.7%.
Full details are in the original sources.
