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Photo = Coupang |
[Alpha Biz= Kim Jisun] South Korea's Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office has indicted e-commerce giant Coupang and its private-label subsidiary CPLB without detention for allegedly manipulating product search rankings to unfairly promote their private-brand (PB) items.
According to prosecutors, from March 2019 to November 2023, Coupang artificially boosted the search rankings of 51,300 directly sourced and PB products over 160,000 times on its platform. The manipulation involved inflating ranking base scores by up to 1.5 times, misleading consumers into believing the rankings were objectively calculated based on sales, user preferences, and relevance.
Investigators found that Coupang’s PB and direct sourcing departments systematically identified underperforming or new products in need of promotion. These were then artificially boosted by the algorithm team using fixed placement or weighted scoring.
The case was built through digital forensic methods, including code analysis and search algorithm tracing. However, the prosecution dropped related charges concerning manipulated product reviews, citing insufficient evidence.
Earlier, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined Coupang 140 billion KRW (approx. $100 million) for similar practices and referred the case to the prosecution.
Alphabiz Reporter Kim Jisun(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
