In short, for Japanese companies, when the
Japan domestic market is saturated for most established products industries,
products & services, Japan market size is unlikely to grow yet shrinking
with aging population, they are forced to go global.
That has been the trend even for FMCG
companies that were slow in going global unlike companies of automobile and
electronics.
As for MNCs, it is about looking at the
Japanese market from a bit different perspective. Although emerging marketing may seem more attractive
than the Japanese market, Japan is still a country you cannot ignore.
Actually it can be an ideal market to
develop a new business model and roll out worldwide, positioning Japan as a “test
marketing” country. This is because expectation
of Japanese consumers are the highest in the world.
These are the kind of things touched on in the
two eBooks I wrote is all about, which was published by StartiaLab, a leading
Japanese eBook publisher in November, 2015.
English version: 7 Things to Know to be Successful in Business in
Japan
Japanese version: 世界を相手に勝つための教科書 – グローバル社会で事業を拡大する7つの方法と8つの事例
I get inquiries about Japan market entries
via LinkedIn. And, it was interesting to
see Japanese attendees were very attentive when I did a 90 minutes seminar in
December 2016 in Japanese about the same theme as my Japanese version eBook. The organizer have finished making their
monthly brochure for March 2016 including a session about my seminar.
The participants were very attentive, and
what really attracted their interest is that there can be a way of creating
business in such an aging Japanese market – after all it is about how you
perceive market without “barriers” with out-of-the-box way of thinking.
