제 23 호 Tipping Effect
- 작성일 2024-09-09
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Kicker: COVER STORY
Tipping Effect
By Ye-Dam Hwang, Reporter
Do you know about the tipping effect? As an economic term, it means the case when the market share of either of the two goods in a competitive relationship suddenly rises and monopolizes the market. To explain it easily, it refers to the phenomenon where many things or people are tipped in a certain part. Even though you couldn’t fully understand this term now, I’m sure that you and many other people have experienced this effect in society. In our society, it refers to the situation of following or imitating other people based on that person’s action without any check.
I think this effect is seen especially clearly in the food industry. For example, “Taiwan’s big castella” spawned a national craze in Korea in 2016. At that time, many “Taiwan’s big castella” stores emerged throughout the country and lots of customers had to wait in long lines for the castella. However, the popularity gradually faded because of one television program’s misleading story with bringing the cooking oil of the castella into question, and the market for that big castella disappeared after less than a year. Similar to this, the tipping effect in the field of food has continued and is still common these days.
Taiwan's big castella
https://www.edaily.co.kr/News/Read?newsId=01482566632458480&mediaCodeNo=257&OutLnkChk=Y
Tipping Effect in the Food Industry
From the past, there were many cases of tipping effect of food industry in Korea. From 2010 to 2011, there was a craze of handmade hamburgers, and in 2014, premium gimbap with unique filling materials such as cream cheese and pork cutlet won the popularity. To capture the public fancy of cheap drinks, the market of low-cost coffee expanded on a national scale in 2015. Taiwan’s big castella gained a lot of popularity in 2016, and “myungrang-sidae rice hotdog” enjoyed explosive popularity for corn dogs with special materials like rice cake, mozzarella cheese, and potatoes in 2017. Also in 2019, Taiwan’s black sugar bubble tea and sandwich with bread, sliced ham, egg, and condensed milk rose and were popular in the food service industry of Korea.
From 2019, foods with mala like malatang have been still popular with its spicy taste, and from 2023, tanghulu, a candy-coated fruit skewer has gained lots of popularity as a snack. Especially nowadays, the latest craze is yogurt ice cream, known by the franchise’s abbreviated name “yo-a-jung”, is in great demand with customizing yogurt ice cream with some toppings such as fruit, chocoballs, and honeycomb honey. Also Dubai’s chocolate which is made of kadayif, an oven baked shredded pastry with thick syrup which is enjoyed by Middle Easterners such as Turkish, is the feeding frenzy now in Korea. Like these, this kind of tipping effect brought about many franchises and had influence with the same or similar products of popular foods to the food service industry of Korea.
Best menu items of "yo-a-jung"
https://www.dailian.co.kr/news/view/1389494/?sc=Naver
Side Effects of the Tipping Effect
There can be some good effects of the tipping effect in the food industry, but I think the side effects make a bigger impact. I think there are three bad effects of the tipping effect: standardization, suffering of self-employed people, and causing overspending. First, trend business can make the standardization of the food industry. When a certain popular food appears, it monopolizes the food industry and causes uniformity with a mushrooming of identical or similar products of the popular foods. Therefore, this effect can disrupt the diversity of the food service industry.
Second, when the craze is on the wane, some self-employed people of the product of the craze suffer. In other words, the majority of successful restaurant business items which take advantage of the tipping effect are only flashes in the pan. According to the National Tax Service, in 2015, individual business persons who founded a business were 1,068,000 and the people who closed a business were 739,000. Among these people, the people who shut down their shop related to the food and beverage industry were 153,000, which was 20.6% of the whole number. This kind of situation of foundation and closure has been common in the tipping effect of other popular products. Thus, time after time, many independent businesspersons suffer and get damage from the burning down of the flare, especially financially.
Third, many of the popular products are not cheap. Though some products, like low-cost coffee, are inexpensive, most of them are quite expensive due to scarcity which is caused by lots of demand. Also, when celebrities talk or show about some certain products, the products can be easily going viral by people, especially by the fans. Therefore, particularly wanting to follow what the celebrities do, people follow the trend and overspend on the popular products even though they actually do not need them. This kind of spending habit can trigger excessive consumption.
The fad of the food industry can make tipping effect with open-run and shortage of goods. The tipping effect of the food industry has a great power of popularity, but the side effects of it are not small. Some people say that trendy foods are the items which can easily shrink in popularity at any time. Therefore, I want people to pick over the features of the product, like rareness and continuity, before starting their business, and I hope that this tipping effect will decrease in the future.
Sources:
https://terms.naver.com/entry.naver?docId=2067060&cid=50305&categoryId=50305
https://terms.naver.com/entry.naver?docId=1614587&cid=50305&categoryId=50305
https://www.kpinews.kr/newsView/1065596963963919
https://www.busan.com/view/busan/view.php?code=2019111119111116145
https://www.inews24.com/view/1745269
https://www.dailian.co.kr/news/view/1389494/?sc=Naver
https://www.g-enews.com/article/Global-Biz/2022/03/20220304110118496393bf579e81_1
https://www.edaily.co.kr/News/Read?newsId=01482566632458480&mediaCodeNo=257&OutLnkChk=Y
https://biz.newdaily.co.kr/site/data/html/2024/08/26/2024082600081.html