Suwon City Develops Smart Marketplace Service for 'Digital New Deal'...Gumaetan Market to Pilot Next Year

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Seo Dong-young] Suwon City announced on the 21st that Gumaetan Market, a traditional market, will transform into a smart marketplace utilizing an online platform.

Starting next year, Gumaetan Market will enable small business owners in traditional markets to more easily enter the online market through neighborhood-based smart marketplace services, while residents can more conveniently use traditional markets.

Suwon City plans to develop and establish an 'untact smart marketplace platform' by the end of this year, pilot it at Gumaetan Market, and launch shopping services using apps and kiosks starting next year.

The core of the service is a cloud-based non-face-to-face O4O (Online For Offline) smart marketplace to revitalize small businesses.

The system will be developed so that consumers can order products sold by small business owners in traditional markets through mobile apps or kiosks, then pick up the products or have them delivered.

Additionally, the service will be implemented to allow consumers to easily view marketing information through sales reviews and ratings, and enable direct communication through real-time chat functions.

In other words, based on neighborhoods, small business owners and consumers in traditional markets will directly communicate and trade products, providing small business owners facing declining sales after COVID-19 with new avenues through untact methods.

By leveraging the advantages of delivery apps and direct transaction apps, traditional market products can be easily accessed.

This project is being implemented after being selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT's 'Digital New Deal' public sector cloud flagship project in 2020.

Eltob Inc. will oversee the development of an untact smart marketplace platform for small business owners, while Suwon City plans to support this through collaboration with Gumaetan Market merchants.

For this purpose, the city held a kick-off meeting on the 16th with Suwon City officials and executives from the Gumaetan Market Merchants Association.

Ahn Sang-geun, chairman of the Gumaetan Market Merchants Association who attended the meeting, expressed expectations, saying, "Small business owners in traditional markets are relatively vulnerable to digital technology, and I hope this smart marketplace platform service will translate into practical assistance."

The city plans to pilot the smart marketplace service at Gumaetan Market first, then expand the service so more traditional markets can use it, and prepare for future linkage with public delivery services.

A city official stated, "This service provided based on cloud technology, a fourth industrial revolution technology, is easy to spread and effective as a non-face-to-face business model for traditional markets," and added, "Online services for offline venues will become a new opportunity for small business owners in traditional markets facing difficulties."