Japan is an important presence on the Amazon platform. Japan has an Internet population coverage rate of 93%, and e-commerce is developing rapidly, but it only accounts for 5% of the entire retail industry. China is Japan’s primary import country, and China’s total trade with Japan accounted for 23.2% of the total trade in 2018. In addition, other advantages of Japan are that there are not many sellers and it is close to China, so the logistics cost is low and the logistics time is fast. But the disadvantage is that many sellers do not have Japanese talents, and it is easy to cause controversy if they only rely on tool translation. If the product description is inappropriate, resulting in the physical product not matching the description and missing potential customers, it may even cause disputes and generate bad reviews, which will eventually affect the performance of the seller’s account.
Japan has many unique holidays, such as the second Monday of January, the Coming of Age Ceremony, the National Foundation Day of Japan on February 11, the Girls’ Day on March 3, the Children’s Day on May 5, and the Golden Week from April 29 to May 5, which can help sellers carry out more holiday marketing activities.
Amazon Japan has a large population, strong consumer willingness, a broad market, and low logistics risks. It is a rare e-commerce blue ocean. Sellers can only seize business opportunities if they settle in early. Compared with the fierce competition in the US site, the KYC review and VAT taxation in the European site will increase the difficulty of initial operation for new sellers, so the Japanese site has become the best choice for new sellers.