Coupang

Coupang was founded in 2010 in Seoul, South Korea, as an e-commerce company. It has become a market leader for e-commerce in South Korea and boasts of its ability to deliver products same day, and when products are ordered at midnight, they can be delivered by 7 am the next morning. The product catalog includes clothing, fashion accessories, sports equipment, kitchen utensils, books, stationery, pet supplies, and more. Coupang also offers end-to-end fulfillment and last-mile delivery services. Coupang has also developed a variety of services, such as Coupang Pay, which offers simplified on-platform payments; Coupang Eats, which offers prepared foods; and Coupang Play, which offers video streaming.

Coupang was founded by Bom Kim, who graduated from Harvard College and went on to Harvard Business School before dropping out to pursue the founding of Coupang. Bom Kim's Coupang mimicked U.S.-based Amazon by working to disrupt South Korea's online retail space through price competition (pricing their products below competitors) and investing in swift delivery systems. Similarly, Coupang invested in allowing users to return goods easily, including offering a service where users can leave a package on their doorstep for a delivery driver to retrieve in the event of a returned product.

Coupang built to profitability through these customer-centric principles, with the company's 2022 revenue of $20.6 billion from its "product commerce" division, which includes retail and grocery services. The e-commerce firm earns sales from its own stock of goods, fees from third-party sellers, and from its Coupang Eats and Coupang Play services. The company has grown its profitability by squeezing efficiencies out of its proprietary delivery infrastructure, including investments in robotics, such as automated vehicles to move through the company's fulfillment centers, and are capable of delivering 1,000-kilogram packages to sorters. These investments allowed Coupang to cut its workforce by up to 65 percent.

Despite serving South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, Bom Kim has stated that he sees Coupang as a U.S. company. Kim himself is a U.S. citizen, incorporated Coupang in Delaware, and trades the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange, with offices and fulfillment centers in several countries, including the U.S.

Coupang made its market debut on the New York Stock Exchange through an IPO and began trading under the symbol "CPNG." The company's stock began trading at $63.50, and shares closed at $49.25, still above the company's target range of $32 to $34.

Coupang's main service is the company's e-commerce shop, where it sells goods and services in a range of categories, including home goods, decor goods, apparel and beauty products, fresh food and grocery goods, sporting goods, electronics, everyday consumables, travel, restaurant orders and delivery, content streaming, and advertising. The company's e-commerce service is attractive to consumers because of the company's low prices relative to other e-commerce competitors, and, potentially more important, is the company's delivery options, which use artificial intelligence and robotics to increase the speeds of its logistics while also promising rapid same-day or next morning delivery. Similar to other large e-commerce sites, Coupang offers a global retail partner program, with a market for international brands that wish to launch in the South Korean market.

Coupang's delivery service, known as Rocket Delivery, was launched in 2014. The delivery service is responsible for the same-day and dawn-delivery options, which Coupang has stressed as helping to meet the needs of its customers. The delivery system is controlled from end-to-end by Coupang, which allows the company to deliver over 85 percent of its orders without extra packaging to minimize the use of boxes and other wasteful packaging.

Rocket Delivery is partially realized by the company's logistics network, which includes 200 warehouses spanning 20 million square feet across South Korea and Taiwan and a fleet of thousands of delivery drivers and trucks. The company has stated that 70 percent of Koreans live within ten minutes of a Coupang logistics center, which simplifies last-mile delivery. This has allowed the company to deliver 99.3 percent of orders within one day, with the company delivering 3.3 million items each day in 2021.

Launched in 2023, Coupang's Rocket Beauty offers customers a catalog of high-end international and local beauty brands, including Estee Lauder, Mac, Bobby Brown, and Hera. The products are delivered through the Rocket Delivery service to ensure they are delivered within twenty-four hours of an order being made.

Similar to Amazon's Prime membership, WOW is a Coupang subscription service that offers various benefits to users and offers Coupang a secured fixed income and improved profitability. The subscription costs a monthly fee of 4,900 won ($3.88 USD) and allows users to enjoy overnight delivery, thirty-day unconditional refunds, and unlimited access to Coupang's over-the-top (OTT) service. Among the benefits, free delivery of any item, regardless of price, has been the membership's main attraction. Similarly, the membership offers hourly delivery of fresh groceries and same-day or dawn delivery on non-fresh grocery items as well as exclusive discounts to subscribers.

Rocket Fresh is a fresh grocery delivery service that uses the Rocket Delivery network and cold-chain logistics to ship fresh food to customers within hours of ordering. This includes shipping fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and other grocery items through the company's online store. The Rocket Fresh service also uses eco-friendly "Fresh" bags, which are reusable delivery bags insulated to keep groceries cool. The service offers a pickup service for bags, where the delivery driver will pick up an empty bag on the next delivery and clean and sterilize it for reuse. The Fresh bags are part of Coupang's attempt at reducing packaging and creating closed-loop recycling systems.

Coupang Eats is a last-mile food delivery service. Similar to competitor services, Coupang Eats allows a customer to order food from a restaurant listed through its application, and a delivery person picks the order up and delivers it to the customer. Users can pay for the delivery in real time through the application as well, similar to other food delivery services.

Coupang Play is an over-the-top (OTT) service offered on mobile devices, tablet PCs, smart TVs, and in-browser and offers a wide range of entertainment, including movies, television shows, news, live sports, and Coupang original series. The streaming service was able to get exclusive broadcasting rights to the German professional football league Bundesliga and the second tier league Bundesliga 2 for the South Korean region. The streaming service also got the broadcasting rights to show the German Supercup and relegation play-off matches for the South Korean region. The strategic partnership was launched in part to continue to push the success of the streaming service, which was launched in December 2020.

Coupang Flex is a flexible gig work service for anyone over eighteen years old to choose a date they want to work for Coupang delivery. Further, the service allows users a chance to choose how they want to work; for example, they can choose whether they want to drive deliveries or assist with order picking. Coupang Flex workers can work approximately three to four hours while delivering fifty to sixty packages. According to Coupang Flex, users can sign up with their names, phone numbers, and location where they want to work, as well as whether they can drive, which has drawn some concern over how secure the service is.

Coupang Pay was launched initially as a payment gateway and payment system for the company's platform. However, since its launch, the service has expanded to an easy payment system, which allows users to purchase items online by using only a password or biometric authentication; however, Coupang Pay is developed to require neither a password nor biometric authentication and allow for purchases automatically with a registered credit card. In this, Coupang Pay is aiming to challenge Samsung Pay, Kakao Pay, and Naver Pay in the easy payment segment. Within a year of launching, Coupang Pay became the second easy pay service by use, behind only Naver Pay, with Coupang experiencing a settlement turnover at 25 trillion.

Following the launch of Coupang Pay, the company also announced its intention to extend its financial services into offering loan and financing services. This included offering installment loans to small merchants and businesses.