Special talents who get Coupang Live going
From the moment customers open the Coupang app until they get their orders delivered to their doors, we are reinventing the experience of shopping to wow the customers. And Coupang Live, Coupang’s live commerce platform, is providing a line of fresh content and differentiated benefits to the customers through its live streaming services. There are special talents behind the liveliness of the streaming services who, with close cooperation and quick actions, make the services available for the customers. Please meet Jaeho JH (CLG Vendor Management), Na Ri Shin (CLG Creator Management), and Jun Hang (CLG Product).
Hello, please provide an introduction on what you do at Coupang.
Na Ri: I am Na Ri, and I am in charge of content planning and creator* management in the Coupang Live Group (CLG).
Jaeho: Hello, I work in the Vendor Management Team of CLG and manage sellers that sell products via Coupang Live.
Jun: Hello, this is Jun, and I’m a Senior Product Manager in CLG. As a product manager, my job is to design the Coupang Live system for our vendors and creators.
* A creator: A host that live streams on Coupang Live
Jaeho
Na Ri: The CLG Creator Management Team plans strategies on the who (host), what (content) and how (production) for Live. Once the Live products and dates are set, we strive to come up with the most effective selling points by working with BMs, LMs and partner companies. In fact, we manage the entire journey that we share with creators from recruiting creators who best fit the products and strategies to issue handling and review during streams.
Jaeho: The CLG Vendor Management Team recruits and manages sellers for Coupang Live. We look for sellers with good products on Coupang and support them with the successful broadcasting of Coupang Live streams. Coupang Live plans streams by using a live platform called “Coupang Creator Marketplace,” where a large number of creators from different backgrounds are registered. We propose products deemed most effective for Live to sellers and help them increase their Live efficiency by recommending creators who can best showcase the strengths of sellers’ products.
Jun: The product team’s role is to design the products to meet the business requirements and improve the user experience. We work with the business team to know their requirements and business logic, the UX team to get to know the user’s needs through user tests and design the user interface of our products, and the engineering team to develop the products and launch them on time.
Na Ri
Na Ri: Coupang Live is a fun, authentic live commerce platform. With a growing number of customers in Coupang Live, we see an “agora” being developed to share user experiences and feelings. In the past, customers used to look for reviews from channels outside of Coupang before buying products, but now they are using content and building sympathy and bonds with each other within Coupang. This is possible thanks to creators from diverse backgrounds such as pharmacists, hair designers, professors and working moms who communicate with customers openly and truthfully based on their own experiences.
Jun: Coupang Live is providing a service to help vendors in Coupang sell their products through the future of online shopping — live streaming. The biggest difference between Coupang Live and other players in Korea is that we are building a live commerce ecosystem by developing the Creator Marketplace platform to let vendors and creators connect with each other. We are developing a sustainable and healthy partnership with all stakeholders in live commerce, and we care about their long-term growth. We have partnered with hundreds of professional creators on our platform in two months to provide professional live streaming services to thousands of vendors.
Vendors don’t have to have a live stream experience, and they don’t have to hire a creator; all they need to do is to select the best products with the best price and find a creator through Creator Marketplace and pay for sales performance.
Na Ri: We flesh out the product strategy framework shared by the Vendor Team and plan out stories, concepts, hosts and staging. Once the stream starts, the Vendor Team responds to product issues in real-time, while we manage creators in real-time for timely communication of those responses to customers.
Jaeho: In every process of Live, I work with Na Ri and Jun. Once the product to be streamed is decided, we request the Creator Team to recruit the most suitable creator for the product. Here, we also deliver the seller’s requests regarding the direction of the stream. For important streams, there are times when we have a prior meeting between all stakeholders including the seller, creator, Vendor Team and Creator Team.
Jun: My job is to connect the creators and vendors. I always talk to Na Ri and Jaeho’s team to get to know their requirements, to learn their experience of managing creators and vendors, and think about how to make Creator Marketplace better by translating their experience to features and automating some of their manual work by the system to improve our efficiency.
Na Ri and Jaeho discussing props for live streaming
Na Ri: For me, it was when one of our creators said she found her experience with Coupang Live very special. I once had the chance to talk to one of our creators who had worked with us for quite a while. She said that throughout her live commerce experience for the last few years, Coupang Live was the only platform where she was not thrown on air all by herself. She used to shoot streams alone in a big hollow studio as a solo host and responded to comments all by herself, but with Coupang Live she was able to bond with customers just by sharing the experience of using Coupang and got a lot of good pep talks. Only then I realized that it’s not just customers but how creators feel and what they experience through Coupang Live that is also very important.
Jaeho: Last August, we launched Creator Marketplace. Creator Marketplace is a new service not provided by any of our Korean competitors. While preparing for the launch, we were concerned if the service would successfully take its place and if sellers would adapt well. But now, sellers are providing positive feedback and we are taking our place in the market in a fairly stable manner. I hope Creator Marketplace will grow together with the rise of Coupang Live.
Jun
Jun, you are currently working in Shanghai. What does it mean to you to be with Coupang Live?
Jun: I joined Coupang Live in April 2021, and I can’t forget July 26th— we officially launched the Creator Marketplace platform and opened it to our creators and vendors on that day, after only five weeks of development and two weeks of internal testing. I witnessed a fast-paced agile development team with high quality, and a very professional business team, to make the platform launch in such a short time.
If you’d like to join the Coupang Live team, check out Coupang’s career site for job opportunities.