Getting "the formula" right in Japan requires a thoroughly researched understanding of Japanese consumer needs and business practices. However in addition to using your research to understand how need-states might differ to your home market, it is also necessary to place your research in the context of an appreciation of the different values that underlie consumer behaviour in Japan. Making some degree of adaptation to account for differing needs and values related to your product, and sometimes your broader approach to doing business, is usually critical in both getting off the ground and in building the foundations for lasting success.
This article suggests three key criteria are important for businesses hoping to launch their brands in the Japanese market.
1. Win trust
The first thing to understand is that when it comes to spending money the Japanese tend to reflexively adopt a defensive posture. In Japan, it can be far more important to cause no upset to yourself or others than it is to meet a need or solve a problem. For this reason, Japanese buyers always "look before they leap"; and they place a high premium on trust in order to allow them to make the leap. In Europe or the US many consumers may not realise that the ice-cream or shampoo they are buying is owned by P&G or Unilever. Such ignorance is rarely the case in Japan, and most advertising in Japan specifically includes an all-important closing reference to the manufacturer or parent company. Who you are matters, and for those entering the market the dimension of trust should be dealt with before any other. There follow some strategies for winning the trust of the Japanese consumer:
Hitch yourself to a star
Outsiders often wonder why Japanese advertising seems to rely so heavily on the use of celebrities, including some of the biggest name stars from overseas (who would not be seen dead endorsing the same types of products in their home countries). The reason is that in Japan celebrity endorsement generates a level of trust, credibility, not to mention visibility that can be hard to match. Needless to say, building trust is a more complex task than securing the services of a celebrity to endorse your brand, but in terms of getting around consumer defenses and having them pay attention, there are few quicker ways in the short term to do it.
Western marketers generally strive to ensure that only the "right" kind of celebrity is used to create the right brand image. However the key criteria are a little different in Japan. In deciding which celebrity might be used most effectively in a campaign the most important consideration will usually be the nature of the emotional relationship between the consumer and the celebrity (as opposed to seeking a fit between the brand and the celebrity) and its effect on winning confidence. This is why it might seem random to us to see Cameron Diaz advertising a cell phone provider, Richard Gere advertising a Japanese male beauty parlor, Jean Reno advertising Toyota or David Beckham endorsing just about anything but without doubt selection of the right face has been a careful and calculated decision, although the criteria might seem arbitrary.
Borrow someone else's trust
Creating trust requires genuine efforts in terms of investment and strategy but there are steps that can be taken to leverage your resources. Partnering or even licensing your brand with an established "name", allows your brand to gain trust by association. This not only mitigates the massive investments in money and time related to starting up in Japan, it can also be a most effective way of seeing the market through Japanese eyes. However, it is critical to identify the correct partner and to assess their real intentions. There are numerous examples of disappointing sales performance in such partnerships between western and Japanese firms, however the following examples have survived and prospered:
- Nivea joined forces with Kao Corporation in 1969 and have had become leaders in skin care in Japan
- Pepsi is made and distributed by Suntory / Welch's fruit juice is made and distributed through Calpis / Tropicana fruit juice made and distributed via Kirin, all large domestic beverage manufacturers.
- Britain's luxury department store Harrods has successfully promoted its brand and sold products in Japan via its partnership with Mitsukoshi
Overcompensate
When confronted by a market disposed to treat you with suspicion, implementing extraordinary measures to reassure the consumer is a good way of tackling the trust issue. Take the example of the acne treatment Proactiv which is distributed by an American based direct marketing company called Guthy Renker. In their infomercials, Guthy Renker have used a mix of foreign and local celebrities such as Vanessa Williams, Jessica Simpson and Manabe Kaori; so they have already employed star power to get around the first line of consumer defense. But on top of this, they offer a well publicized 60 day unconditional money back guarantee. This is hardly a new concept in western marketing, but in fact is quite novel in Japan.
A look at the success of Tokyo Disneyland is also illuminating in this regard. Tokyo Disneyland, opened in 1983, is the most successful and popular theme park in the country. When the park was opened an enormous amount of care and attention was paid to combating fears of cultural pollution or culture shock from Japanese consumers. Firstly, the park was kept exceptionally clean with much tighter checks and regulations concerning cleanliness than at parks in the USA. Ride drivers were issued with white gloves as used by drivers on Japanese public transport and use of English reduced to a purely decorative level. Moreover, foreigners working at Tokyo Disneyland were kept to a minimum and only given performance roles; only Japanese staff were issued with name badges and given responsibility for dealing with visitor's queries and complaints. Disney ensured that there were proper gift wrapping services available, more sit-down restaurants than take-away stands, and a small picnic area on the park's outer perimeter for families to eat their lunch boxes (bentos).
At the cultural level small but significant changes were made to reassure the consumer that their visit to Tokyo Disneyland was not a betrayal of Japanese tradition. An innovation specifically created for the Tokyo park was the "Meet the World" attraction which offered an animated history of Japan that one sociologist has described as "an elaborate defense of the Japanese way". In this way Tokyo Disneyland bent over backwards to counter any fears and anxieties on the part of the consumer.
2. Turn your differences to your advantage
Like it or not, when you enter the Japanese market, the one thing that you can rely on is that the market will find you to be different. Japanese are finely attuned to even rather minor differences in approach or presentation. In a sense, foreign entrants are at least slightly unburdened by the eternal marketing question of how to differentiate! Of course care should be taken to work out which points of difference to local competitors deserve to be emphasised. Such a consideration may take into account the image of the brand or product's country of origin, practical and material differences, innovative features and cost.
A good strategy in this regard can be selling on heritage. This is becoming a popular tactic in many markets, but in Japan it can add a particularly positive resonance to a brand's image. Striking a chord with the Confucian emphasis on the group and reverence of the past, Japanese consumers like to feel that the brands that they buy are both established and popular. This is connected to the pursuit of authenticity as well as the preoccupation with trust. Selling yourself as the original manufacturer of a certain product, such as Levi's for jeans or Chanel for perfume, with a long tradition counts for a lot in Japan. And with most notions of heritage being socially constructed, this means that you don't necessarily have to have been the original manufacturer or be hundreds of years old to gain benefits from heritage. Heritage can be alluded to via product or brand name, location of store, form of packaging, or storytelling/myth-making commercials.
KFC for example have harnessed heritage and made successful use of their differences in their advertising for the Japanese market. In Japan KFC has even been adopted as the special Christmas food. This not only makes use of their "foreignness" which matches the foreign festival of Christmas, but allows the consumer to buy into an idea of tradition. Commercials self-perpetuate and construct the fact that KFC is always eaten by families at Christmas. Yet this is only a "fact" in Japan. Moreover, the figure of the colonel is perhaps particularly powerful for consumers who crave heritage as much as they demand innovation.
While newness should be celebrated and the appropriate differences highlighted, even for new brands, creating an aura of heritage or substantiveness can facilitate winning trust. Where possible, differences should enable a brand or product to follow the third golden rule.
3. Re-set the Agenda
Re-setting the agenda is a strategy for turning being foreign into a positive as in a sense it is sometimes much harder for a Japanese company to do so without being seen as negligent of prevailing rules and norms.
The idea is to force the market to change its existing practices to compete with you on your own terms. Failure to do so more often than not means that your product or brand will be simply ignored, even if it enjoys a good honeymoon period (see Foreign Marketing Misses in Japan ). It should be emphasized that, at least in the product marketing field, Japan has extremely wealthy, competitive and responsive domestic marketers who are more than able to respond to the challenge of foreign entrants. In a culture that cries out for innovation and is served by companies that are used to meeting that need there is little point expecting anything if you can't offer a genuinely different approach.
A success story
With laws against discounting book sales and without much e-commerce experience, many analysts predicted that the Japanese market would be hard to crack for online booksellers Amazon.com. But Japan has turned out to be one of their most profitable markets. Amazon were quick to see that high property prices, a cheap and efficient postal service combined with a fetish for convenience meant that the Japanese market could play to their strengths. Amazon also took advantage of the help available to them. At the time of their entry into Japan, the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) were keen to attract investment in Japan's cyber market and Amazon made effective use of their advice and partnership suggestion services. Their leader in Japan, Jasper Chen (left) , has been careful to work with Japanese partners and keep his finger on the pulse of consumer sensibilities. For example, he strongly defends Amazon's decision (which was seen as somewhat risky given Japanese consumers' dislike of negative selling) to publish both positive and negative reviews as it fosters feelings of trust among Japanese consumers.
Conclusion
When answering the question," how much change is required to make our market entry a successful and sustainable one?", we submit that the most useful way of answering this question is to use research coupled with your own wisdom, to assess how effectively your format (even if proven overseas) allows you to meet our additional criteria, repeated below:
1. Win trust
2. Turn your differences to your advantage
3. Re-set the agenda
