Shunsuke (Sean) Fujiya, Director at Rakuten Ichiba, will be speaking at online marketplace conference Retail Without Borders on 15th March, as part of a special focus on selling to Japanese consumers.
Retail Without Borders, hosted by Pentagon, brings together retailers looking to expand internationally with world leading global marketplaces. Throughout the day you will learn how to accelerate your global online sales, boost international brand awareness, navigate local customs, international shipping, language barriers and so on.
What is the importance of Japan?
Japan is the fourth biggest ecommerce market in the world and with 126 million people living in Japan, and a 91% internet penetration – this means there are over 114 million potential online customers to tap into. The average annual online revenue per shopper in Japan is USD$1,023.58 – one of the highest globally.
Japanese shoppers like to immerse themselves in the product, by reviewing a detailed product description and looking to reviews to understand the quality of the goods they are looking to buy. Around 65% of purchases is done from smartphone in Japan – consumers like to shop when they commute.
Japanese cross-border purchases are growing steadily, with 72% of buyers preferring to shop on a large global marketplace due to buyer guarantees offered by the platform – To assist sellers, Rakuten offers a Customer Protection Guarantee to ensure money, quality and authenticity of products.
Why you should be selling on Rakuten
With nearly 90% of Japanese internet users registered as members of Rakuten Ichiba, this is a key marketplace for those wishing to target the region. When speaking with Tamebay, Shunsuke promised that at Retail Without Borders he would lay out the opportunity for UK and EU sellers in Japan with Rakuten along with the financial rewards for success.
It’s important to remember that whilst it might appear simpler and easier to sell to European countries, these markets are considerably smaller than Japan by several magnitudes. If you look at where the money is, you can’t afford to ignore Japan and Rakuten is the biggest gateway to Japanese consumers.
Reaching Japanese consumers via Rakuten and Pentagon
As well as speaking at Pentagon’s flagship conference, Rakuten have been working closely with Pentagon over the past 12 months to develop a unique and simple solution for retailers looking to reach to Japanese consumers.
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We are very excited to be the first non-Japanese integrator to Rakuten Ichiba and to have the opportunity to showcase the sales potential of Rakuten, and Japan, at our flagship conference. Japanese consumers are hungry for UK products, and since they are highly tech savvy, online marketplaces are the perfect channels to satisfy their desires.
“As a business we have invested heavily in our Japanese operations over the past 12 months. This has resulted in some fantastic case studies with UK retailers who are taking advantage of our retail model, which is where we take care of all contracts, logistics, marketing, translations, customer service and so on. I can’t wait to share more about our operations and success stories at Retail Without Borders this March.”
– Tomomi Miura, Pentagon’s Managing Director Japan
To mark the conference, Rakuten and Pentagon are offering the first 20 Tamebay readers to contact them, the opportunity to get 100 products live for free on Rakuten by March 15th.* If you are interested, email: [email protected] and make sure you register for Retail Without Borders here to meet Shunsuke in person. There are also 30 FREE tickets up for grabs using discount code: RWBJAPAN30 – so make sure you claim yours before they are gone!
*products are subject to approval by Rakuten and Pentagon.
