Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Gmarket Tips 2 - Events/Coupons

Gmarket always has lots of fun and interesting events going on (: However most of these are in Korean, but you can still have a look and enjoy them even if you may not understand them~And recently GDragon from Big Bang has been appearing in a lot of ads/campaigns for Gmarket too~

There are lots of events/special deals/category offers which are all listed on the Gmarket's front page. You can browse through them, not just for coupons, but also for special price items, daily/weekly deals, bestsellers, popular mini-shops, hot items in various categories etc. It's in Korean but even if you can't read Korean you can read numbers and see pictures right? Just click on whatever looks interesting~ ^^

***Note: events change every few weeks or so, so by the time you read this there might be different ongoing event. Go to Gmarket to check them out (: ***

On the left are a bunch of words, as you hover the cursor over them the picture on the right will change. Clicking on the picture will open a new tab/window leading you to that particular event. The list is updated frequently so there's always new stuff popping up~


Also, many discount coupons are available in Gmarket, but you can only see most of them when you shop in Korean. Like if you go to the Korean version of the shop, often there'll be links to applicable coupons. However if you view the same shop in English you won't be able to see the coupons. So, if you want to view the item on its Korean page, change the word everything before the goodscode number in the URL to "http://item.gmarket.co.kr/detailview/Item.asp?goodscode=". The page should change to the Korean version and you'll be able to see the coupons if any (: Eg: http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=198545045 becomes: http://http://item.gmarket.co.kr/detailview/Item.asp?goodscode=198545045


Here are examples of coupons available now for some for more popular categories, (on the Korean page) Books/CDs/DVDs, Beauty and Stationery. Currently there are no coupons for Fashion/Clothes/Accessories/Shoes/Bags. (And because I assume not very many overseas buyers shop for Snowboards/Automobile parts so...didn't include them ^^)

BOOKS/CDs/DVDs
So say for example you want to buy a JYJ CD. Going to the page of the item there'll be click-able things which when you click, 'draws' the coupon. The Books/DVD ones are the 'sure win' type, when you draw, you'll definitely get them. However you can only draw one each per day, and they expire within a certain number of days. **the event is not on every month, I think they either alternate or have it randomly. The icon and amount of coupon may change too**
There are 3 which you can get daily:
- w1,000 off w5,000 and above
- w2,000 off w10,000 and above
- w3,000 off w15,000 and above
Usable for all items within the Books/CDs/DVDs category.
***Now it seems that you don't get these anymore, and there are now only 2 coupons which you can get daily: - w1,000 off w5,000 and above, and w2,000 off w15,000 and above***
Click here for the book coupon page.


STATIONERY
There are also free coupons for stationery, however these are of the 'lucky draw' type, you may or may not get them ^^ Going to the page of the stationery item you want to buy, you'll see a round icon near the price and 3 rectangular icons scrolling further down. Clicking either the top or bottom icons will lead you to the same coupon page, where you can draw. Only the left-most 7% one is for stationery. The other 2 I don't know, but they're not applicable for stationery so even if you get them, you can't use them for stationery.

Click here for the stationery coupon page.
Click the one on the LEFT.
Coupon valid for 2weeks after receiving.
You can only draw one once every 2 weeks.


BEAUTY
For Beauty coupons there's the Beauty VIP page, and a Beauty 'club' of sorts whereby you can get free coupons every month. For beauty VIP you can draw:
- w1,000 off w10,000,
- w2,000 off w20,000,
- w3,000 off w30,000.
Again these are the 'lucky draw' type. You may or may not get them. You can draw one of each daily.

Also, if you've purchased any beauty items recently you can draw for:
- Gstamps (if you've purchased at least 1 item from the beauty category, can draw once/day)
- w2,500 off w10,000 (if you've purchased at least 3 items from the beauty category, can draw once/day)
- Gmarket w10,000 coupon (if you've purchased at least 5 items from the beauty category, can draw once/month)
Again, these are also of the 'lucky draw' type.


For the beauty club, Beautifuler, you can get special coupons monthly from many brands while have an 'Official' online shop on Gmarket, eg Etude House, Banila Co, Dr Jart, Enprani, Nature Republic, Clio, Peripera, Skin79 etc. These coupons range from 10%~20% off.


ENGLISH SHOP
For the English page there's also a list of events. Hover over the numbers and the picture will change. Click the picture and it will lead you to the page of that event (: There are hot items for this season, popular mini-shops, featured items for certain categories etc.
For the English version there're coupons too, for the past month it's been 'Overseas Shipping' coupons, there were 3 types:
- 15% off above w20,000
- 10% off above w15,000
- w2,000 off above w7,000.
However this event ended 5th December 2010. Starting 6th Dec there's a new event, you can check it out here. It's in English. Vote for your favorite outfit to enter, and you could win prizes.

Click here and here to draw overseas shipping coupons.
There are a variety available and these are only applicable for overseas shipping orders.
You can draw once per day and they expire 3 days after.
This is the lucky draw type, you may or may not get them.
These are updated/changed every month or so.

Most coupons are only applicable for certain categories. So to see if a coupons can be used for an item, just click the 'My Coupons' box next to the price of the item, and the ones which can be used for that particular item will be shown/be click-able. (See Gmarket Tips 1)

When you draw the coupons, as you're drawing there'll be a gif/flash image playing, then after that you'll see either a successful or unsuccessful notice. The flash picture is of the following spinning round and round.


When you successfully 'win' a coupon, you'll see the following picture of a picture of a megaphone, confetti and a wrapped gift~


When you're unsuccessful there'll be no balloons/confetti, just a pair of floating hot air balloons ^^


GMARKET + G-DRAGON
As you know, G-Dragon recently released a song for Gmarket, called Gmarket Party. It's really really really super addictive! And you may notice him appearing in various corners of the Gmarket site, example, while browsing leg warmers:

I don't think you find it if you start from the English site, but this is the main promotional page for the G-Dragon tie-up special events. So this is what you see when you first reach the page:

Every week/2weeks? There's a new fun event ^^ You can watch the Gmarket Party MV at the side. This week's event it: Fill in the missing lyrics to enter the contest, and you could win Gstamps or w50,000 Gmarket gift coupons~
For the previous event there was a different lyrics quiz and a mini 'treasure hunt mission' ^^ You had to find nine different G-Dragon icons around the Gmarket site to enter a contest to win headphones that G-Dragon wore in the Heartbreaker MV. And the event before there was another lyrics contest and a DDR-like mini-game, where the Gmarket Party song plays while objects come raining down in different columns, you have to press the right keys according to the tempo. You could play for fun (and the song is really catchy) and if you got above a certain score you could enter a contest to win Big Bang CDs (if I recall correctly haha) (:


Scrolling further down the page, you can download free wallpapers and screensavers (: There are other stuff too but I can't read Korean well, so I'm not sure what they're for. You can check it out if you'd like (:
**This event is over**

So yeah, there are lots of events going on at Gmarket all the time, some are quite fun and useful (: Games, contests, special deals, recommendations, bestseller lists etc. So if you have time you can go check them out~ Do note that events change every few weeks or so (: Links may change over the months too. For the most up to date events, go to the Gmarket main page~

9 comments:

  1. hi kris, i get a message that reads "foreign members of below standard credit points cannot participate in event". So how did you manage to click the coupons in the korean language?

    ReplyDelete
  2. @ Anonymous ♥

    How many credit points do you have? Are you still a "new" member? You need to have at least a certain number of credit points before being able to draw coupons I think. So if you've just started an account/making first purchase or if you've never ordered anything from Gmarket yet, that might be why you get that message?

    I can't remember when I started drawing coupons from the Korean pages, but right now I've got 200+ credit points so I don't get that message...But I tested with a friend's account that has never ordered anything, it got the same message as you did. So perhaps the credit points issue?

    Hope that helps!

    Kris ♥

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks kris!
    i will take note of that. Do you know how frequently are we allowed to draw coupons? say for eg, the "deals of the week" english page, this does not seem to allow us to draw daily.....

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Anonymous ♥

    Hmm, that's strange! Most coupons allow for you to draw once per day, and the deals of the week one is a daily draw coupon. I've been drawing it almost everyday the past week, no problems so far...

    A new "day" begins at 12 midnight Korean time (GMT+9), have you taken that into account when drawing in your country? ^^ Or maybe try refreshing the page a few times? Or it could be a problem with your browser, maybe try clearing cookies/history each day?

    Hope that helps!

    Kris ♥

    ReplyDelete
  5. We can only leave comments on the same seller once a week, after purchased?

    I am thinking of posting 2 different comments on different items from same seller, but unable to make any comments after I click "item received" for second item.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @ Anonymous ♥

    Unfortunately you can't do that :( No matter how many different items you bought, as long as it's from the same listing/item page, you can't leave more than one comment per week.

    Which is kind of unfair because even if you wait a week to click the button for the second item, all the "item received" buttons of one order will disappear on its own a week after you click the first button!

    ♥ Kris

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  7. I have bought 2 clothes from same seller, 1 is good quality, 1 with no buttons, so I have to sew my own spare buttons for those button holes.

    Left one good comment for the good item but cannot leave another comment for the lack of button clothes. :( Next time should leave bad comment for lousy one first.

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  8. If seller send less items than paid for, gmarket.kr customer service do not help much. They ask for photos of this and that, later they went "missing". one whole month no responses at all. Very disappointed with the service. :(

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Anonymous ♥
    Sorry to hear of your bad experience :( Out of the hundreds of items I've ordered from Gmarket, I've never experienced any missing items, so I must be lucky? But yes Customer Service sometimes takes a long time to respond or gives replies not related to what you're asking that it makes you wonder if they understood what you said :/

    ♥ Karisa

    ReplyDelete