South Korean retail conglomerate Lotte is expanding its e-commerce offering with one-hour delivery grocery services, as part of a plan to double online sales by 2023.

The rush grocery delivery service is paired with upgrades to the firm’s product recommendations system in a move to attract higher volumes of online purchases in a market increasingly shifting to internet buying. 

Lotte is currently targeting a doubling of last year’s e-commerce sales levels to KRW20 trillion (US$16.3 billion) by 2023.

As part of the upgrade, the firm will merge its seven online operations onto a single platform – combining convenience stores, pharmacies and department store trading with its supermarket and electronics businesses. Lotte will collect sales figures for more than 20 million SKUs under the system going forward, which will serve to improve its product recommendation algorithms.

Rush deliveries are commencing in Seoul for rollout to other areas within the territory later on.