‘CDTB Colloquium: Market Kurly’s Data-driven Marketing’ Special Lecture

On June 11th (Thu) at LG-POSCO Supex Hall, a special lecture ‘Market Kurly’s Data-driven Marketing’ was jointly held by CDTB(Center for Digital Transformation & Business) and KUBS(Dean Jaewook Kim).

KUBS invited Ji-wong Chun, who operates data analysis for Market Curly’s marketing as a customer relationship manager. For Thursday’s event, Director of the Center (concurrent position of Dean)  Jaewook Kim, Vice Director of the Center Byungcho Kim, Associate Dean Baeho Kim, and Byungwan Kim, CMO of Market Curly participated with 50 student audience. Following the rules regarding the COVID-19, all participants were required to wear masks and to keep social distancing along the lecture. The lecture was also provided via online, and 65 students were present at the network.

The event was begun with an opening remark from Dean Jaewook Kim: “We are honored to invite such a brilliant speaker amid the issues and struggles of COVID-19. Considering the ongoing situation, we decided to proceed an online session at the same time. I’m excited to get broader insights about Market Curly, a leading firm in Korean commerce and delivery market and how they are going along with a phase of Digital Transformation.”

At the beginning, Mr. Chun introduced himself with his stories about graduating KUBS, saying “I’m delighted to have a speech at the place where I used to take classes before.” Briefly sharing the company profile and the strategy team that he is working for, the speaker highlighted “Fresh food should be delivered fresh to the customers” and “Making sustainable growth with suppliers”, which is the company’s motto and vision. The strategy team at Market Curly performs data analysis for predicting periodic sales and demands, and their role is significant in setting fresh food quantities for daily demand because the business takes burden of risk and cost if there is an over-supply in food.

Mr. Chun prepared five question-form topics and continued with his own answers explaining why those are important at businesses. The first question was “Are you thinking like a CEO?” He stressed that it is rather important to think about “what” to analyze than “how” to analyze. To practice the way of thinking like a CEO, he recommended to repeat structuring the profitable connection between the future value of customer and the company. Understanding the flow of profit through CLTV (Customer Life Time Value) or sorting customer characteristics to improve accuracy of prediction could be one of the specific methods estimating future profits.

The second question was “Are you able to focus deep into data?” Categorizing the data is very important since the outcome varies in a large scale depending on its categorization. Mr. Chun introduced “DST Matrix”, which refers to Driver, Segment and Time.

The third question was “Does the data become my own performance?” “Not only utilizing the data into business operation, it is very important to reach out to the customers with various kinds of utilities and goods”, he said.

The fourth content was about “How data changes the organizational structure.” He explained how data motivates people and changes the culture of the company.

At last, the final question was “Are you projecting over the data?” He addressed that it is uneasy to learn this highly advanced skill set for the data managers, because they should foster creativity, intuition and critical mindset at the same time. At the end, he commented: “Data is a supporting tool. The differentiation happens when the researcher understands the direction of the company.”

After then Q&A session followed. A student asked how the data analysts’ work separations and collaborations are managed in Market Curly. Mr. Chun answered that the work style depends on each team but we’re trying to build work environment for making great use of data and it can be sure that teams using data to approach their goal will increase more and more.

Vice Director of the Center Byungcho Kim made an ending remark, saying “Amid the COVID-19, Market Curly has been showing us the successful case in the South Korean retail business. We appreciate Mr. Chun for sharing his great insights.”

Meanwhile, KUBS founded the Center for Digital Transformation & Business (CDTB) in 2019 as a platform to lead the field of DT and connect with Industry/University/Institute. And now CDTB is carrying out various special lectures about DT.