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| 공정거래위원회 (사진=연합뉴스) |
[Alpha Biz=(Chicago) Reporter Kim Jisun] The Fair Trade Commission has launched an ex officio investigation to find out whether the convenience store industry has violated the "gapjil."
The FTC visited CU, the number one convenience store in the industry, on the 22nd and is conducting an ex officio investigation. We will also investigate GS25, 7-Eleven, and E-Mart 24 sequentially.
According to the industry on the 22nd, the FTC visited the headquarters of BGF Retail (convenience store CU operator) in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and conducted an on-site investigation.
In the survey, the FTC is known to examine the compliance of fair trade under the Large Distribution Business Act.
In an earlier "written survey of trading practices in the distribution sector" conducted by the Korea Fair Trade Commission last year, convenience stores are experiencing a deepening year-on-year unfair trade in a number of types. According to the survey, most businesses saw their trading practices improve from last year, but convenience stores fell 2.4 percentage points (p) from a year ago (92.9 percent).
In particular, 5.8% of the respondents said they experienced unfair practices, such as requiring convenience store owners to unfairly pay sales promotion costs, more than twice the average of the retail industry (2.3%).
Starting with BGF, the FTC is also planning to investigate other convenience stores.
AlphaBIZ 김지선(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
