Tag: e-commerce

Japan sees strong growth in mobile commerce

Mobile commerce is growing quickly in Japan. Consumers in many of the country’s largest cities, such as Tokyo and Osaka, are beginning to favor shopping on their mobile devices. These consumers had already been heavily exposed to e-commerce and the world of online shopping, making the transition to mobile commerce significantly easier. According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, mobile commerce grew by 16.2% in 2011 and continues to grow as more consumers become comfortable with the notion of purchasing products with their smartphones and tablets.

Fashion sector sees major boost from mobile sales

Mobile commerce has had a dramatic impact on several sectors of the retail industry, but Japan’s fashion sector has been seeing the majority of this impact in recent months. Zozotown, one of the country’s leading fashion retailers specializing in e-commerce, reports that it has seen no less than 40% of its sales come from mobile devices in 2012. Rakutan, another Japanese e-commerce company, notes that 30% of its sales have come through mobile commerce over the same time frame.

New companies showing strong interest in Japanese mobile commerce

The growing proclivity among Japanese consumers when it comes to mobile commerce has lead to something of a surge in mobile commerce applications. Many organizations recognize the growth of mobile commerce in Japan as a powerful opportunity and have been working to introduce new applications and mobile payments platforms to the country in recent months. New capital has lead to the emergence of new startups that aim to be the next big name in mobile commerce and this has lead to a marked increase in the competition that exists in this particular field.

Small companies may be unable to compete with larger companies

While more competition can be good for consumers, it is not necessarily good for businesses. Startup company’s may have high ambitious, but whether or not they will be able to compete with much larger companies that have already established a strong presence in the mobile commerce sector has yet to be seen. So far, consumers appear to favor the platforms supported by larger companies they are more familiar with than those coming from largely unknown organizations.

An infographic released by Shopzilla has indicated that smartphones and tablets having a meaningful impact.

In the official launch of Shopzilla Inc.’s new monthly online shopping research initiative, the company has published an infographic that has pointed out a number of key trends, including the importance that m-commerce is having to the sales that are being made over the internet.

The first issue of this monthly report is the start of the tracking of key shopping trends online.

The data presented in this e- and m-commerce report and infographic is based on a survey that was conducted directly following purchasing from the Bizrate Insights Network. That network includes more than 5,200 American and Canadian online retailers. This study data was collected from April 24 through April 30, 2013 with the participation of more than 9,000 buyers.

Among the findings of the online and m-commerce trend survey which were included in the infographic were the following:

There were a number of surprising trends from consumers over various e- and m-commerce channels, such as:

• More sales were driven by emails from stores than magazines, Facebook, and blogs and content sites.
• Though desktops continue to lead the way (used by 85 percent of the respondents), 11 percent of the online purchases came from an iPad tablet device. This figure was 20 percent for those with HHI $150K+.
• iPhones performed far less than their Apple tablet m-commerce counterparts, with 2 percent.
• That said, Android phones performed equally to iPhones, at 2 percent, but Android based tablets were far behind iPads, at less than 1 percent.
• Tablets and smartphones based on other operating systems both came in at less than 1 percent.
• Among the respondents, 75 percent said that price helped to influence their buying decisions.
• The respondents said that they’d rather spend than try to be frugal in 28 percent of the cases.
• Thirty one percent felt that they would be spending more in the month following than they did that month.
• Seventeen percent of online purchases were made from the workplace.

The complete findings of the Shopzilla study are available on their website.