Nikkei’s annual ‘Net Life’ survey for 2015 shows a downturn in spending online due to the overall expenditure cut backs over the past year. As Amazon has added new brands and sub-stores, more shoppers are moving away from domestic rival Rakuten, although Rakuten still comes out as number one in apparel and food sales online. […]
Yamato will launch an e-commerce package for retailers this month, leveraging its vast logistics base. The new service brings competition for Amazon and Seven & I, with rapid fulfilment to customers and backend support, while crucially helping Rakuten and other portals solve their problems with patchy merchant deliveries. Small merchants will even be able to […]
While traditional formats struggle with consumption tax increases, saturated markets, locational problems, and low consumer confidence, Japan’s budding e-commerce (EC) channel continues to grow rapidly. Despite the stereotype imagined by people who’ve never been here, Japan is not really the high-tech land where everyone has an engineering degree, doodles artistic works of manga over the […]
Start Today has launched a new market place offering SMEs in the apparel and fashion world access to its large base of fashion consumers. It may well threaten the fashion merchant business at Rakuten and Yahoo but the move is also part of a much bigger story about who will win in e-commerce: general merchandise […]
Seven & I Holdings has a problem. In FY2012, Seven Eleven still accounted for 81% of the group’s net profits. It’s not surprising then that the group’s chairman, Toshifumi Suzuki, is keen to find new alternatives. This is the main thrust to four separate acquisitions announced in December, with the long-term goal of creating the […]
