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Innovating at a Global Scale: Coupang’s global patents have increased more than 30% YoY

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Over a six month period recently, Coupang's cumulative number of global patent registrations exceeded 2,100. We've filed patents all over the world, including in South Korea, the United States, India, Taiwan, the European Patent Office and more, and our cumulative patent filings in the first half of 2024 have grown by more than 30% compared to that of the first half of 2023. Our unrelenting focus on customers drives our culture of innovation and encourages our inventors to think big.

To celebrate our progress, we'd like to highlight three of our innovations that span the entire purchase journey, from selling, shipping, and using products.

1. Abnormal sale detection system

What if you accidentally put one less zero in the price during the listing process? This can be a nightmare scenario for any business, but it can be especially damaging for small & medium sized enterprises, whose operating profits are not at the same scale as large businesses. Regardless of a company’s size, human errors can occasionally happen so to protect our seller partners, we invented a system to mitigate this risk.

Our patented Abnormal Sales Detection System uses AI and machine learning to alert product managers immediately when prices deviate significantly from normal levels. The system compiles information on product mix, price, promotions, etc. over time and plots a baseline price graph. If the system detects a significant deviation from the baseline graph, it quickly notifies the person in charge, and then reflects the action taken to continuously to improve.

For low-cost products like pencils, even a small price change can result in large changes in margins. For these products, Coupang's Abnormal Sales Detection system tracks the frequency of price changes in addition to each price change. It calculates what percentage the current price has changed from the original price and provides alerts that are appropriate even for low-priced products. 

By introducing this helpful feature, we help sellers avoid listing products that are incorrectly priced due to data entry errors, or not selling products at all because they are priced too high. 

 

2. Warehouse Availability Tracking System 

Our customers love the convenience and reliability of Coupang’s fast, free delivery. As you can imagine, there are many logistics technologies that enable our ability to quickly and reliably deliver to customers for free, and the Warehouse Availability Tracking System is one of them.

As the volume of our business increased, we noticed certain external factors – such as inclement weather conditions, a spike in canceled orders, or unexpected absences at our logistics facilities – could adversely impact our ability to meet our delivery promise for customers. To address these potential challenges, Coupang developed a Warehouse Availability Tracking system that tracks the number of employees present, the amount of inventory per product, the amount of orders per delivery type, and the amount of orders that could be transferred to other facilities, if needed. This allows us to calculate how many orders a fulfillment center can handle in a given day, and transfer some orders that exceed capacity to other fulfillment centers when needed.

As a result, as of last August, more than 3 million orders nationwide were reassigned to more spacious fulfillment centers and delivered to customers within the promised time frame. It was the result of thinking about the most efficient way to satisfy customers with limited resources. With these types of inventions, Coupang is able to deliver even more orders on time, 365 days per year.

 

3. Coupang's Free After-Sales Service

One of the most important factors when buying home appliances is the after-sales service (A/S). And it can be more challenging for small and medium-sized appliance brands to offer the same A/S system as large companies, who often contract directly with repair companies. 

That was part of our inspiration to launch Coupang Free A/S, another free benefit for all Wow members that provides a better after-sales service experience for our customers. Before Coupang, when you tried to schedule a repair, the wait was either too long or it was difficult to find out when the center was available. If you sent an item to a repair center, it was hard to get status updates and see the progress of your item.

That’s why we made the entire after-sales service process visible in MyCoupang, along with details like available appointment dates and repair progress, all within the Coupang app. To reduce the waiting time for customers, we also organized pre-visit phone calls to help customers with simple issues that could be resolved in advance. In addition, the patented app for visiting technicians included repair schedules, navigation features, and parts request functions to help them resolve issues quickly.

As a result, customers' confidence in the product has increased, which has translated into higher sales performance for small and mid-sized home appliance brands. As of March, the average monthly sales of products with Coupang's free after-sales service badge increased by more than 45% year-on-year, and the average time from application to repair completion was less than two days. 

The dictionary definition of invention is to think of and create something that doesn't exist yet. At Coupang, we're committed to inventing to bring the untapped future of commerce to today, and one of the ways we do this is by organizing events to recognize and encourage our inventors. Check out the links below to meet some of our inventors. They're on the front lines, building the future of commerce.

(Link) Inventors Meetup Spring 2024

This article is from the Coupang Newsroom and to read more please visit here.

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