“Digital Electric Home Appliances and Entertainment Prospective”

What commodities will be hits this year?

Take advantage of grand sport events like World Cup and Asian Games. Pay attention to the movement of consumption out of depression. Target the contents of entertainment. ---

LG Economic Research Institute advised on the 24th that you should make use of these trends to make your products a hit.

Special demands due to the World Cup are likely to increase the sales of digital products. Lots of world enterprises have often made hits by launching advanced electric products according to sport events. A typical example is the portable cassette player, known as `walkman` which were immense popular all over the world when Sony and Matsushita released it during the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964.

LGERI predicts that due to digital satellite broadcasting, the demand for an integrated HDTV, a set top box and especially high-end and premium products targeting high-income bracket and a/v-maniacs will increase. Already popularized digital cameras are attracting more consumers.

LGERI advised to pay attention to the movement of the cellular phone market generated by the international mobile telecommunication-2000 (IMT-2000) service.

Last year’s slump in demand due to the ban on the subsidy for cellular phones stopped development of new products, but color monitored phones are likely to spread across the market by substituting black-and-white image cellular phone.

Entertainment contents typified by `The Friend` will still stay strong. Animation is likely to join the contents along with movies, novels, games, and music this year.

The 5-work day system is at the center of the storm that controls the trend of hit commodities this year. While most Koreans blame `the lack of time` for not being able to enjoy leisure time, introducing the 5 workday system will create demand for outdoor activity related commodities.

`Compound functional commodities` that compound functions or products and services will be continually strong in the market.

LGERI gave high recommendations for commodities popular among increasing `kidults` in their 20s to 30s. These products are geared to entertain and stimulate nostalgia for childhood, targeting `kidults`, which is a compound word made up of `kids` and `adults`.

Myung-Jai Lee mjlee@donga.com