Etnomarketing in Japan

What about the Japanese market? Is this a profitable market for some companies?

The Japanese market has proven that it is the worlds’ most profitable market for many companies; some good examples are several designer brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior. 

The Japanese market isn’t only interesting for the designer brands but also for smaller brands and services because 2/3rds of these smaller companies ‘profit coms from this Japanese market. They have managed to create this huge amount of profit by opening a huge number of new large stores in their capital and in other cities across Japan.

For a lot of companies who want to grow it's rather a smart move to enter this Japanese market at an early stage because this can be very profitable for them. The opposite is even proven true. If you want to succeed in Japan the company needs to create a first-mover status. A good example is eBay. eBay forgot to create a first-mover status on this market. Yahoo! had entered the Japanese online auction market before eBay did. Yahoo! persuaded the Japanese by adopting some very culturally sensitive marketing strategies and by being very active on the internet. They need to have a really good website, translated in Japanese and is very persuasive.  Yahoo! really dominated, that’s why eBay eventually shot its Japanese site down.

eBay really learned his lesson:  in Japan it’s all about being the first-mover, the most innovative, the most willing of all. If your company can fulfill this, success is guaranteed. But if not, you’re ready for closure. This is all because japanese consumers and corporate buyers in Japan have the unusual way of being very loyal to suppliers, in this example Yahoo!. Etnomarketing is again proven very useful.