Since this is a bike community, quite a few people seem to be taking the recent decline in bike popularity pretty seriously.
Honestly...I don't really care either way...as long as I'm enjoying my own riding, that's my mindset..haha
Since people seem to be citing all sorts of reasons for the decline(?) in bike popularity in Korea,
not because I majored in economics/business or anything...I just had some thoughts come to mind, so I'm writing this
figuring readers might have similar thoughts pop into their heads too, just for fun.
You probably all know the general theory that "when price rises, demand falls, and when price falls, demand rises."
The so-called law of supply and demand.
But actually....there are a few more factors that go into this law of supply and demand.
1. Income
2. Tastes & preferences
3. Substitutes
4. Complements
- First, income: South Korea's per-capita national income by year
2022: $34,820
2023: $35,560
2024: $36,132
2025: $35,962
: Looking at the trend in income level by year..there hasn't really been much change over the past 3 years. Meanwhile, there have been plenty of factors like taxes and prices
lowering disposable income, so it's fair to say that the financial room to invest in hobbies like cycling hasn't grown.. unless you count it as having actually shrunk.
- Second: Tastes and preferences
: This category covers consumer taste, trends, and shifts in what Korean people are into, and I think this is actually the biggest factor.
There's also the general perception of cycling and such, but amid ongoing economic headwinds even after Covid, prices kept rising, and due to real estate issues,
stagnant growth, high exchange rates and so on, consumption patterns are shifting too..in other words, consumer preferences themselves have changed.
More than anything, I think Korean lifestyles just aren't suited to cycling, which requires long stretches of outdoor time.
During Covid, people had that kind of time. But now that things are back to normal, with long working hours and a growing emphasis on family and childcare,
cycling probably just doesn't fit that trend as a hobby.
- Third: Substitutes
: This probably doesn't need much explaining. There are countless substitutes for cycling as a hobby.
- Fourth: Complements
: This is a slightly different concept from substitutes—things treated as part of the same "package," where a price change in one product
affects demand for another.
For example, if the price of bike accessories like helmets, clothing, shoes, etc. skyrockets, demand for bikes themselves drops. Something like that..
I think this is also a contributing factor. Not just the bike itself—you need a lot of additional investment to properly gear up.
And on top of that, those prices are just too expensive.
Actually, a junior of mine who's into running got interested in cycling and jumped in thinking all he needed was the bike itself, but once he saw the extra costs for gear like a bike computer, helmet, shoes,
and so on piling up, he gave up. I think this is also a factor.
The stagnation or fading popularity of the cycling population these days, along with the crashing prices of used bikes, is probably partly due to manufacturers' oversupply problem from the Covid era,
but I think it should be understood as all these factors above working together in combination.
It's definitely not just a single problem..
That's exactly what makes it worse. It's not going to be easy to recover from.
Personally, I....don't think a revival of the bike market is coming easily anytime soon.
I think it's just time for us to adapt, and maybe rethink our bike-related consumption patterns too.
