Japan is currently one of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce markets. Some of the factors attributed to the rapid growth of e-commerce in Japan include the single language culture, developed economy, and highly urbanized population.
There are three major players in the Japanese e-commerce market: Amazon, Rakuten and Yahoo! Shopping (Lohaco). Meanwhile, a continued rise of m-commerce, transactions completed via mobile device apps, brings more options and expands on the C2C environment. Coupled with a developed distribution infrastructure and small country size for convenient and expedient delivery, this ensures Japan’s rate of e-commerce growth will only continue.
From 2018 to 2022, it is expected that the annual growth rate for revenue will be 6.2% and that Japan will remain one of the top 5 largest e-commerce markets in the world.