NAVER D-Place Report 2022 Part1
NAVER D-Place Report 2022 Part1
NAVER D-Place Report 2022
Part 1. SmartPlace Solutions
: Growth Drivers for Offline Businesses
The D-Place Report, first published in 2021, aims to examine current benefits that online platforms provide to local and offline businesses through empirical analysis and ultimately explore ways to further support these businesses.
The D-Place Report 2022 analyzes the business impact of solutions offered through SmartPlace, NAVER’s location-based store profile and management platform. This follows the results of last year’s D-Place Report 2021 , which confirmed that using SmartPlace helps businesses reduce costs and increase sales. This year’s D-Place Report explores the effect of using SmartPlace solutions on customer acquisition and sales.
SmartPlace Solutions: Effective Tools for Offline Businesses
NAVER offers an array of location-based services such as Integrated Search, SmartAround, Maps, and Navigation that allows users to explore and discover restaurants, beauty salons, lodgings, and other offline stores. Between the user and offline store comes SmartPlace, a cost-free digital platform that enables nearly 2.27 million offline businesses, as of December 2022, to manage and personalize their store profile displayed on NAVER’s location-based services. Through SmartPlace, offline businesses can digitally connect to users and manage their online store profiles. At the same time, SmartPlace solutions including SmartCall, TalkTalk (messaging service), Booking, Order, Place Ads, and Local SME Ads help businesses operate their stores more efficiently.
For this report, Professor Alex Jiyoung Kim and his research team at Sungkyunkwan University analyzed empirical data and conducted surveys to understand the effects of SmartPlace solution use on customer acquisition, conversion, and sales, as well as sellers’ perception of the platform services. The study particularly focuses on restaurants and beauty salons, considering these types of business can utilize diverse solutions.
Using SmartPlace Solutions Generates 3.3 trillion KRW Additional Annual Sales Analysis of SmartPlace data finds that restaurants using SmartPlace solutions experience an increase in sales that is 3x greater than restaurants not using solutions; for beauty salons, businesses using solutions experience a 31x greater sales increase than peer businesses not using solutions. As a result, if all businesses on SmartPlace were to use at least one solution, this would generate an additional KRW 3.3 trillion in annual sales.
Using SmartPlace Solutions Increases Customer Acquisition by 1.5 to 12.9x and Conversion by Up to 8.4x
The study finds that SmartPlace solution use drives an increase in acquisition (page views) and conversion. Restaurants and beauty salons using SmartPlace solutions respectively experienced a 1.5x and 12.9x increase in acquisition compared to peer businesses not using solutions. SmartPlace solution use also improves conversion by 1.2 to 1.7x for restaurants and 3.9 to 8.4x for beauty salons.
In addition, analysis of the use effects of each solution (Booking, SmartCall, TalkTalk, Place Ads, and Local SME Ads) shows that each of the five solutions, when in use, increases acquisition and conversion rates. Specifically, businesses using Booking experience a 3.1x increase in acquisition and up to 2.4x increase in conversion compared to businesses not using the solution; businesses using Local SME Ads experience a 3.1x increase in acquisition and up to 3.6x in conversion relative to businesses not using the solution.
Top 2 Reasons for Using SmartPlace Solutions: Customer Acquisition & Management and Revenue Growth Businesses’ perception of SmartPlace solutions is consistent with the data analysis: survey results indicate that businesses, on average, use 3 to 4 SmartPlace solutions, and they are more satisfied with SmartPlace than businesses that do not use solutions. In particular, businesses most often noted “customer acquisition and management,” “revenue growth,” “advertising and marketing,” and “store management” as the main reasons for using SmartPlace solutions. They also rated each solution the following satisfaction scores (out of 5.0): 3.85 for Booking, 4.08 for SmartCall, 3.31 for TalkTalk, 3.48 for Local SME Ads, and 3.83 for Place Ads.
D-Place Report Confirms Positive Economic Impact of SmartPlace Use on Offline Businesses This D-Place Report verifies that, in addition to registering on and using the SmartPlace platform, using SmartPlace solutions further generates economic value for offline businesses.
Professor Kim notes, “through this study, we were able to conclude that local and offline businesses can acquire more customers and increase sales by using SmartPlace. In the midst of a major wave of digital transformation, we hope that offline businesses will increasingly utilize digital features such as NAVER SmartPlace solutions to achieve sustainable growth.”