Startup Island TAIWAN Gathers Taiwan Startups and Senior Influencers in Japan to Discuss Omni-channel Strategy for Japan’s EC Market Post-pandemic
On March 31st, Startup Island TAIWAN held the second “Jumpstart Your Japanese Journey” online workshop to discuss the “Omni-channel Strategy for Japan’s E-commerce (EC) Market Post-pandemic”. The event attracted nearly 200 business owners to register. Two Taiwan startups, KKday Japan and Pinkoi, shared their successful business expansion to Japan, and senior EC influencers within Japan shared their current EC operation tactics, the cross-border services they provide, and their observations of the EC trends. After the speakers’ sharing, the participants actively engaged in the Q&A sessions. Startup Island TAIWAN will collect the questions and speakers’ answers and share the key points on social media platforms. Follow the Facebook page to get firsthand news and updates!
Two Taiwan startups, KKday Japan and Pinkoi, both of which have achieved outstanding performances in Japan, shared their development in Japan during the pandemic and provided successful scenarios for reference. KKday Japan enabled people in Japan to get a glimpse into the Taiwanese culture locally through different forms of experience activities and through their participation in the Taiwan Matsuri. Pinkoi, on the other hand, mentioned that cross-border orders constitute 30% of their total sales of Taiwanese design brands and stated that the pandemic has accelerated the growth of cross-border sales. In 2020 alone, the number of cross-border orders has increased by 83%. Additionally, compared with the first quarter of 2020, Japanese orders increased by 163% in the second quarter. In the post-pandemic era, cross-border EC is expected to continue to grow.
Kyeong-uk, Han, Senior Consultant at PPB International, pointed out that “Japanese consumers are more afraid of failures than trying new things”, so to verify the idea that the vast majority of Japanese consumers are used to wearing or buying products that are highly “accepted” by the society, or products that won’t make them “stand out”, or look too abrupt in public. By providing cases of foreign companies entering Japan they’ve worked with, he further emphasized the importance of foreign brands building up “safe” and “purchasable” images through extensive communication with Japanese consumers to win trust.
Miwa Ayumu, Director of the Board at C Channel Lemon Square, said that when assisting brands in planning their marketing strategies, the general method is to increase discussion on Social Networking Service (SNS), to increase user awareness on short videos and audio platforms, and to strengthen the brand value and to make an appeal through video and audio content. Usually, brands will make adjustments according to consumer feedback and use the adjusted results as a secondary publicity point. He also explained that currently, the number of key opinion consumers (KOC) in the Japanese market with less than ten thousand followers is gradually increasing, and brands have discovered the engagement rate with KOC to be relatively higher.
Kasamatsu Taiyo, the Executive Officer at BEENOS, analyzed that overseas consumers usually hold two thoughts in mind when purchasing products — they hope to buy products that are cheaper than those sold in their own countries and hope to buy products that are not sold in their own countries. As a result, overseas consumers take great interest in “long tail” products, or non-seasonal, all-time popular products. As of now, the two categories of hobby and beauty products rank top two in overseas consumption of Japanese products. The development of technology has allowed for global cultural expansion to be almost on zero time difference. BEENOS hopes to empower more global products to enter the Taiwan market and to empower Taiwan products to enter the global market.
Last but not least, Kitayama Ryuzo, Director of CRM at PARCO CO., LTD. shared their take on EC operation. PARCO’s EC is classified under Digital Transformation (DX). The overall CRM is divided into three stages throughout users’ entry: before and after the entry, during and after the entry, and during the entry. During each stage, PARCO accumulates data from different consumer contact points such as EC usage, App usage, points earned, and membership for analysis.
Startup Island TAIWAN will launch the third of its “Jumpstart Your Japanese Journey” series in April, focusing on “Japan’s Next-Generation Energy and Food-Related Technologies in Response to the Global ESG Trend”. The first two white papers on Web3.0 and EC are available for public download.
