Business Meetings and Negotiations in Japan
GBMC is honoured and delighted to present you the following cross-cultural seminar:
More details (on Linked In) from:
Business Meetings and Negotiations in Japan
or from our website:
http://www.gbmc.biz/Japan_Training.html
http://www.gbmc.biz/Training_-_Registration.html
Retail in Japan
“Japanese retail giant Seven & I Holdings Co., Ltd. said Friday its Ito-Yokado Co. supermarket chain will shut down 40 unprofitable stores, or about 20 percent of its stores, over the next few years.
It is expected to close several stores within its current business year ending in February 2016.
The plan comes after the operating profit for the retail group’s supermarket division in the year to last February plunged 34.8 percent from a year earlier amid a consumer tendency to prefer specialty stores such as the Uniqlo casual clothing chain over general supermarkets.” (The Japan Times)
Today’s Japanese consumers seem to prefer “specialty stores” over general supermarkets. This is one of the changes to the traditional Japanese Consumer Mindset. Which one do you prefer and why?
Read more from:
Microbiologist Satoshi Omura source- Kyodo/Japan Times)
“Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Omura on Monday shared this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on a therapy for debilitating diseases caused by parasitic worms.
The 80-year-old Omura, a professor emeritus of Tokyo’s Kitasato University, shared the honor with William C. Campbell of Drew University in New Jersey and Youyou Tu of the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.” (Japan Times)
“Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita was announced as a joint winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for his groundbreaking work in experiments showing metamorphosis of the particle world.
Kajita, of the University of Tokyo, shared the prize with Arthur B. McDonald of Queen’s University in Canada.
The Nobel committee said it honored the 56-year-old Kajita and McDonald, 72, “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.”
“The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe,” the body said.” (Japan Times)
Read more from:
Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Omura shares Nobel Prize for medicine
Japan’s Takaaki Kajita shares Nobel in physics
List of Japanese Nobel laureates (Wikipedia): List of Japanese Nobel laureates
Does this increasingly large amount of Nobel prizes in Science (Physics, Chemistry) tell something about Innovation or Research in Japan? What do you think?
Japanese Kotatsu (Wikipedia)
“IKEA celebrates a decade in Japan next year with various special events and promotions. Since opening its first store in Chiba in 2006, the iconic Swedish home–furnishings provider has expanded to eight locations across the country.
IKEA is transforming into a multi-channel retailer.
Our customers today are changing; and people are much more digital, as well as physical, in the way that they shop. They want to shop when they want and how they want. IKEA needs to change with that. So we are doing that. We are very much looking at how can we then be available; when somebody wants a sofa or a phone, they then start their shopping experience. It doesn’t literally mean going to visit a physical store.
The physical store will always be our competitive advantage. A 40,000-square-metre store, being a fun day out with a food offer and a store to wander around in — with furniture and accessories, and areas for the kids to play — will always attract people. But we want to be more than that. So we will have a new web platform — and e-commerce that we will introduce — to make it so you can shop once you see things on the web as well. And we need to become closer to our customers, so we’re going to try new formats — even smaller IKEA locations — to order [products], have them delivered and picked up closer to the customers.” (EUROBIZ Japan)
In order to succeed in Japan’s Retail, you have got to adapt, localise and develop your offer. Multi-channel strategies and new formats are often advisable. This is a good example. What do you think?
Read more from: IKEA and the Japanese Home Furniture Market
Doing Business with Japan
GBMC is honoured and delighted to present you hereunder the following cross-cultural seminar:
More details (on Linked In) from:
Or from our website:
http://www.gbmc.biz/Japan_Training.html
http://www.gbmc.biz/Training_-_Registration.html
Music streaming service in Japan
“Google has launched a music streaming service in Japan, becoming the latest tech giant to push into the world’s No. 2 music market, despite mixed results among earlier arrivals.
The U.S. company said that its Japanese edition of Google Play Music features more than 35 million tunes available at a cost of ¥980 ($8) a month.
The launch came after similar services debuted in Japan this year by Apple, popular messaging app Line, and a joint venture by IT firm CyberAgent and Japanese music giant Avex Group.
Japan is the world’s second-largest music market, estimated to be worth $2.6 billion in 2014, after the $4.8 billion U.S. market, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan.
But packaged media such as CDs account for about 80 percent of Japanese music sales, contrasting sharply with the U.S. market where digital downloads are soaring.”
(Global) Key players in Music Streaming seem to be late in entering the huge Japanese Music Market. Packaged Media (CDs) are still predominant and far more popular than digital downloads in the “country of the walkman”, where the latest electronics gadgets and mobile phones have always been welcomed! Is Japan’s huge Music Market behind? And for how long? What do you think?
Read more from:
Is Japan’s huge Music Market behind?
Mount_komekura_photovoltaic_power_plant (Wikipedia)
“News that 7-Eleven stores in the Kansai region will trade Kansai Electric Power Co.’s electricity in favor of cheaper electricity from Tokyo Electric Power Co. has locals wondering if Kepco’s six-decade monopoly over Kansai’s electricity supply might be ending.
From October, about 1,000 Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd. stores in three Kansai prefectures will purchase their electricity from Tepco. The move comes just months after Kepco raised rates, and Seven-Eleven Japan, noting Tepco’s cheaper fees, made the move to switch utilities.
With deregulation in the smaller users electricity market set to begin next April, giving small businesses and residential customers a wider option of providers, Kepco seems particularly ill-placed to take advantage of the new competitive environment.” (The Japan Times)
It is great to see the positive aspects of the after-2011 period: lower energy consumption in Japan as a result of national saving awareness, wider introduction of renewable energies, enhanced price competition between the market players and utltimately the end of old monopolies! Time to reduce bonuses at Kepco? What do you think?
Read more from:
Japan: when the electricity market gets deregulated!
A prepaid SIM card vending machine at Narita International Airport in Narita in Chiba Prefecture (Shoichi Otsu, Asahi Shimbun)
“NTT Communications Corp. has installed vending machines for prepaid SIM cards at Narita International Airport, offering an easy option for users to activate their mobile phones and other devices on arrival.
Users simply scan their passports to register identification information.
The machines operate around the clock. One is in the arrival lobby of Terminal 1 and the other is in the arrival lobby of Terminal 2.
NTT Communications installed the machines because of the continuing rise in foreign visitor arrivals.
Previously, SIM cards were only available at stores in the airport.” (The Asahi Shimbun)
In the country of convenience stores (“conbini” in Japanese) and of all kinds of vending machines, SIM cards can be bought now from vending machines: how more convenient can Japan be? What do you think?
Read more from:
SIM card vending machines: how more convenient can Japan be?
Robots for farming and fishing (from The Yomiuri Shimbun)
“Research institutes and universities in Japan are developing robots to play an active part in the primary industries of agriculture and fisheries, which are suffering from aging workers and a lack of manpower. The robots are intended to alleviate the farmers’ workload and improve the quality of crops.
The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry actively supports the move with the idea of “making good use of Japan’s robotics technology, which has long been utilized mainly in factories, now in the field of agriculture.”
The central government set a goal in January to quadruple the size of the robot market to ¥2.4 trillion by 2020, and the primary industries are positioned as a crucial field in which to utilize the robots.
The average age of farmers in Japan was 66.7 in 2014, with 64 percent of them 65 or older. Under the circumstances, there is great interest in using robots to make up for a shortfall in agricultural manpower.” (The Yomiuri Shimbun)
These are all great applications for Robotics Technology whose future seems bright. The next challenge is commercialisation! What do you think?
Read more from:
Japan: Robots helping to reduce farmers’ and fishers’ workload!
“Kokusaika” OR 2 types of “Omotenashi”
Japan firms face hurdles as ‘service’ culture taken overseas:
” …. At Uniqlo stores worldwide, staff greet every customer with “Welcome to Uniqlo!”
They briskly walk around on a clean, white sales floor, refolding and restacking clothes, rarely talking to customers or each other unless approached.
It’s a Japanese style of customer service based on a strict manual and which is praised for its politeness and efficiency. But as Japanese companies increasingly branch out overseas, they are faced with the dilemma of staying true to this retail philosophy while adapting to local service habits.
JETRO’s Nakajima said there are two types of omotenashi, or Japanese hospitality, seen in outgoing Japanese businesses.
One is to treat every single customer with thorough care, as seen in traditional Japanese ryokan hotels. The other is to provide quality homogeneous service in a quick and inexpensive way …..” (The Japan Times)
Our Point:
In their Internationalisation Process (or “Kokusaika” in Japanese), Japanese companies should probably think more of adapting the Japan Domestic “Omotenashi” (hopitality) practices abroad by taking into account the local culture specificities, rather than replicating it as it is. One feature to definitely carry over would be excellent dedicated service and full attention to the customer at any time, before/during and after the sales process. What do you think?
More to read from:
Does “Kokusaika” mean two types of “Omotenashi”?
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