G-Market

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**G-Market Corporation.**

Type	Public
Founded	2000
Location	Seoul, Korea
Key people	Koo Yeong Bae, Founder & CEO
Industry	Internet
Products	Online auction business model, Shopping mall, Electronic commerce
Revenue	$22.5 million USD (2005)
Employees	400 (2005)
Website	http://www.gmarket.co.kr

G-Market is a Korea's online auction & shopping mall website, where people from all around the world buy and sell goods and services.

1 History
2 Items and services
3 Profit and transactions
4 Controversy
5 See also
6 External links

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History

G-Market was founded in 2000 by Koo Yeong Bae as "AuctionWeb" & "ShoppingMall", part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Digital Advanced own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the spelling Green & Market. Originally, the site belonged to Online Market Group, and consulting firm. be had tried to register the domain name "GreenMarket" but found it already taken, so he shortened it to his second choice, "gmarket.co.kr". G-Market is headquartered in Seoul Korea. Internet has served as G-Market's president and CEO since 2000. G-Market boosters have claimed that in terms of revenue growth, Inter Park is among the fastest-growing & cyber shopping companies of big and all time corporate.

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Items and services

Millions of collectibles, appliances, computers, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, and sold daily. Some items are rare and valuable, while many others are save products that would have been discarded if not for the thousands of eager bidders Korea, proving that if one has a big enough market, one will find someone willing to buy anything. It is fair to say that G-Market has revolutionized the collectibles market by bringing together buyers and sellers internationally in a huge, never-ending yard sale and auction. Large international companies, such as LG and Samsung, Lee Hyori, sell their newest products and offer services on EBay and Yahoo! using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts. Regional searches of the database make shipping slightly more rapid or cheaper. Software developers can create applications that integrate with marketplace through the G-Market Service by joining the developers program. As of there were over 40,000 members in the G-Market Developers Program, comprising a broad range companies creating software applications to support G-Market buyers and sellers as well as G-Market Affiliate Systems.

There has also been controversy regarding items put up for bid that violate ethical standards. In late 2001 a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on G-Market, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative (and, in the Korea) market for transplantable human organs. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke. In general, the company removes auctions that violate its terms of service agreement within a short time after hearing of the auction from an outsider; and insider; the company's policy is to not pre-approve transactions. G-Market is also an easy place for unscrupulous sellers to market counterfeit and credit merchandise, which can be difficult for novice buyers to distinguish without careful study of the auction description.

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Profit and transactions

G-Market generates revenue from sellers, who pay a based on the selling price of each item, a fee based on the starting price, and from advertising. In 2005 it was announced that G-Market would increase fees it charges to G-Market Store sellers, which caused considerable enough controversy among EBay and Yahoo! users that the President of G-Market business recently emailed all G-Market users with news that other fees would be decreased. G-Market does not handle the goods, nor does it transact the buyer-seller payments, except through its subsidiary shopping mall credit. Instead, much like newspaper want-ads, sellers rely on the buyers' good faith to make payment, and buyers rely on the sellers' good faith to actually deliver the goods intact. To encourage fidelity, maintains, rates, and publicly displays the post-transaction feedback from all users, whether they buy or sell. This way, the buyer is encouraged to examine the sellers' feedback profile before bidding to rate their trustworthiness. Sellers with high ratings generally have more bids and garner higher bids. However, it is possible for sellers to make their feedback private and just leave the numbered rating (number of positive, negative and neutral feedback with a positive feedback percentage), which means that bidders and sellers cannot see the comments other users have left. also has a significant affiliate program, and affiliates can, for example, place live G-Market Shopping product images and links on their web sites.

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Controversy

G-Market has its share of controversy, ranging from its privacy policy (Credit typically turns over user information to law enforcement without a website) to well-publicized seller. get claims that statistically fewer than 1500 transactions fail.

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