Trend Korea, which is a book series that predicts yearly mainstream trends, has become a bestseller, and it elicits explosive reactions from its readers. Trend Korea analyzes the previous year’s consumption trends, and it anticipates the year’s upcoming consumption trends. The readers can get much information about the changes in consumption through this book, and they can prepare themselves for the changes. Trend Korea 2019 analyzed the 2018 consumer trends and selected the cell market as this year’s trend keyword. Thus, the cell market is now a hot issue among readers and consumers.
  The cell market is a market that has been subdivided and personalized to the point where the existing markets have been split into the cellular level, which requires nearly one-on-one marketing. It is now the age of one-person media due to the development of social media. The cell market is a division of the distribution markets into cell units as individuals buy and sell their products through social media. The cell market is the evolution of the “sell-sumer.” A sell-sumer is a consumer who not only buys and uses products but also manufactures and sells products. Yoo Hyun-jeong, a professor of the Dept. of Department of Consumer Science at CBNU, said, “The reasons why the market has emerged are because the number of people using SNS has increased and various payment services have developed. A more fundamental cause is the fragmentation of consumer needs.” She added, “The mass market was formed after the Industrial Revolution. At that time, productivity improvement was a key issue. However, as productivity has increased and production technology has spread, the competition among producers has intensified, so producers have focused on the fields where they have a comparative advantage to survive the competition, and consumers have shown more and more diverse needs. Because of this, the mass market has become a segmented market, and now it has become a one-person market.” The cell market is not a new concept. As soon as various social media emerged, the range of the cell market activity expanded rapidly. A one-person operator in social media has now evolved from one-person media to a one-person market. Accordingly, the cell market based on social media has grown steadily.
  There are three distinct types of platforms in the cell market. Firstly, there is a cell market based on SNS like blogs, Facebook, and Instagram. When searching the term “market” on Instagram, one can find over 19 million posts, so people can easily understand that the size of the cell market based on SNS can’t be ignored. This cell market does not include existing shopping malls or homepages, but it does include sellers who promote and sell their products by sharing their daily lives on SNS. Consumers can access this easily and trust it because it is familiar to consumers as it is a part of their daily lives, so this cell market has grown steadily. Secondly, there is a cell market based on video channels, like YouTube, which is very popular. According to Google Korea, the number of YouTube creators who have over a million subscribers as of 2018 is over 100. With YouTube creators’ activities, the cell market for YouTube is very active, and these days, even celebrities have accounts and active channels. There are various contents in YouTube. This cell market has grown through “unboxing” channels. Unboxing means presenting a product creators bought and introducing it. YouTube creators who operate unboxing channels promote products by describing a product and reviewing it. This cell market has grown steadily. Lastly, there is a cell market based on existing distribution channels. As the effects of one-person media and influencers have increased, big department stores and home shopping channels have begun to offer cell market collaboration. This cell market is not a traditional offline store. It is a collaboration with big department stores or home shopping channels in the form of a pop-up store sells certain products in crowded places only for a certain period or select shop sells various brands’ clothes and fashion accessories. A representative example is the cosmetics industry. The industry had good results by launching new products through collaborations with one-person media and famous brands. Not only do one-person media introduces products to consumers, but they also solve the consumers’ curiosity in real-time in pop-up stores or select shops. The cell market based on existing distribution channels has grown by providing consumers with more information about their products.
  People are used to using smartphones now. Thus, they often access social media. As people often use social media, the method of buying and selling products has changed. While people purchased products from department stores of offline stores before social media arose, many people buy it through cell markets now. Anyone can promote products easily by sharing posts, and anyone can be a businessperson without opening a shopping mall or creating a homepage. Not only anyone can become a businessperson easily, but also consumers can easily access and buy products. Through this, one can realize that the cell market is going to be a continuing consumer trend.

By Ahn Min-joo
mj40@cbnu.ac.kr