The Seoul High Court has ruled that the restrictions on large retailers’ operations were unlawful, renewing the debate about the coexistence of large businesses and neighborhood mom-and-pop stores.
The court found the Dongdaemun-gu and Seongdong-gu ordinances that ban large discount retailers from operating between midnight and 10 a.m. and mandated their closure two Sundays a month to be unlawful.
The restrictions on large discount retailers were imposed as a measure to aid ailing neighborhood retail shops. Three years on, the measure seems to have had little impact on the neighborhood businesses while creating inconvenience for consumers.
Restrictions on large discount retailers’ operations also means a loss of employment opportunities, especially for part-time workers. Suppliers are also adversely affected as well as vendors who have shops within the stores.
It may have seemed theoretically plausible: Force large discount retailers to close on certain days and consumers will seek an alternative in the form of neighborhood stores. However, as many Sunday grocery shoppers will attest, this is not the case.
Instead of going to traditional neighborhood markets on the Sundays that the large discount retailers are closed, shoppers crowd to the discount retailers on Saturdays, making shopping a big hassle. Also, neighborhood stores do not carry the same range of products, and shoppers who did visit them often went home empty-handed after failing to find what they wanted.
Worse yet, the closures led shoppers to leave the neighborhoods altogether to shop at yet another large retail discount store in another district that was open. In any case, many of the small neighborhood stores are closed on Sundays, leaving shoppers who work during the week unable to do their grocery shopping.
A solution to reviving the neighborhood markets may be found by looking at what the neighborhood shops are good at, rather than attempting to transfer large retail discount stores’ custom to smaller shops: Create reasons for shoppers to go to neighborhood shops.
Traditional neighborhood markets have poured money into modernizing their facilities, but that has not succeeded in attracting shoppers. There are a few exceptions, of course ― the example of a traditional market in Tongin-dong that has become a tourist hotspot after it went through an overhaul that transformed it into an attractive experience comes to mind. But these successes are far and few between.
Rather than restricting the operations of large discount retailers, the authorities should look into helping make neighborhood markets viable on their own merits.
