"Content must become the store. It is a time that demands innovation across the entire funnel—where purchases happen directly from content."
Seong Dong-hun, Deputy Minister of the platform division in the commerce unit at CJ ENM, said this in a lecture titled "Discovery shopping, captured by content commerce" at the 2026 ChosunBiz Consumer and Retail Forum held at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 16th. As the way consumers encounter and buy products changes quickly, the sales strategies of distribution corporations and brands must also change, he said.
Deputy Minister Seong said the influence of discovery shopping—encountering products while consuming content and moving straight to purchase—has been growing recently in the e-commerce (electronic commerce) market.
"Customers are already obtaining product information through social media (SNS)," Seong said, adding, "They are shifting from text-centered to image- and video-centered ways of experiencing products." In the past, consumers searched for and bought desired products on portals or shopping platforms; now, more cases are emerging in which they discover and purchase products through content on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, he explained.
Deputy Minister Seong added, "Customers already recognize brands and go all the way to purchase across countless touchpoints," and "the existing marketing funnel that runs from awareness to search, inflow, and conversion is no longer valid." He continued, "It is no longer about a fight to raise ad efficiency; what has become important is designing the customer journey."
In particular, Deputy Minister Seong stressed that corporations must craft strategies suited to discovery shopping in response to this shift. "Even platforms and brands that pursue purpose-driven shopping—where consumers decide on a specific item, search, and buy—need an approach like discovery shopping when launching new products," he said.
To that end, CJ ONSTYLE is pushing a strategy to make content itself the store. Rather than simply introducing products, it produces content that showcases the expertise and lifestyles of sellers and influencers to create points of contact with consumers. Representative examples include introducing products within actor Yoo In-na's skin care routine and singer Brian's curation of cleaning and organizing products. Deputy Minister Seong said, "Anyone can simply introduce products, but this is an era when content IP that combines the lifestyle of aspirational, expert figures with products has become important."
CJ ONSTYLE also repackages one-hour live broadcasts into short-form content and distributes them on various platforms including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. "Content must go directly to where customers are," Deputy Minister Seong said. "We currently produce about 1,000 short forms a month, and our long-term goal is to expand that to 10,000 a month."
Along the way, strategies for using artificial intelligence (AI) were also discussed. Deputy Minister Seong said, "You must first decide what goal you will use AI to achieve," adding, "We analyze, across hundreds of factors, which short forms are chosen by customers, and we are building an automated system for partitioning one-hour videos into short forms."
He added, "In the AI era, customer needs are changing quickly," and "distribution corporations and brands must also innovate by running small experiments with AI and validating quickly."