How Amazon Dominated Japanese Ecommerce Market as a Latecomer - Kim Seminar, Faculty of Economics, Tohoku University Team A Kota Sawaki Kohei ...
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How Amazon Dominated
Japanese Ecommerce Market
as a Latecomer
Kim Seminar, Faculty of Economics, Tohoku University
Team A
Kota Sawaki
Kohei Kasai
Hikaru Suzuki
Mona Okada
Kota Sawaki (representative)
TEL : 090-2611-5019
MAIL : b3eb1137@gmail.com
1
Title: How Amazon dominated Japanese Ecommerce market as a latecomer
Abstract
This paper is to investigate how latecomers dominate the market of high
switching cost. We focused on Ecommerce market in Japan, where Amazon, as a
latecomer, entered the market successfully. Previous studies pointed out that Amazon
was able to dominate the market because it created higher customer value than that of
its competitors. However, many of it seems ex-post observation based on Amazon’s
huge success in Japan; thus, we hypothesized that Amazon made success in Japanese
market because it managed to encourage the Ecommerce entry users to participate in
the market and to expand the market while it increased the market dominance,
instead of taking the competitor’s customers. Two-staged data collection methodology
was adapted to prove the hypothesis. We figured out if Amazon really attracted the EC
entry users and which aspects of Amazon influenced the customer decision. We
concluded that Amazon obtained a dominant position because it attracted the
enormous number of EC entry users. The result of our study implies that, in a market
of high switching cost, it would be an effective strategy for latecomers to stimulate
entry users by providing attractive conditions for them.
Keywords: Ecommerce, Switching cost, Lock-in strategy, Customer value, Entry user
2
Table of contents
Abstract
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..4
2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development…………………………………………7
2-1. Overview of Amazon and Ecommerce Market in Japan…………………………...7
2-2. Common Belief in the Reason why Amazon Prospered in Japanese Market….10
2-3. Switching cost of Ecommerce………………………………………………………….13
2-4. Hypothesis Development……………………………………………………………….18
3. Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………….20
3-1. Methodology……….……………………………………………………………………..20
3-2. Results…………………………………………………………………………………….23
4. Conclusion and Discussion…………………………………………………………………...26
Reference…………………………………………………………………………………………..33
Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………...…39
31.Introduction
The purpose of this study is to reveal how latecomers to the market of high
switching cost could enter and dominate the market successfully. Generally speaking,
when first movers practice powerful strategies to increase switching cost they could
lock in their customers; thus, latecomers to the market, even when it has a potential to
create the higher customer value than the first movers, have difficulty in taking the
customers away from the first moved competitors and taking the market share (Yazaki,
2005). There are several cases, however, in which latecomers could enter and dominate
the market with high switching cost such as mobile industry and Ecommerce. For
example, Ecommece market seems to have quite high switching cost (which will be
mentioned in chapter 2), but Amazon entered Japanese market as a latecomer and got
the dominant position. In this paper, we will analyze Amazon Japan as a case of
successful entry and dominance of the market of high switching cost.
There are mainly three reasons that Ecommerce, especially Amazon, was selected
as the subject of analysis. Firstly, Ecommerce is a new industry: The market is being
developed in developing countries while the market size is still growing even in
developed countries. In 2015 retail Ecommerce sales of whole amounted to 1.55 trillion
4US dollars and is projected to grow more than 4 trillion US dollars in 20201. Secondly,
each Ecommerce retailing company delivers the strategy to lock in customers and the
switching cost among Ecommerce industry is supposed to be quite high. This
characteristic of Ecommerce industry will be elaborate in chapter 2. Thirdly, Amazon
advances overseas so actively that it has fourteen foreign branches and it influences
enormously to the market after entering as a latecomer. According to Ecommerce News
Europe2, Amazon was the most-visited Ecommerce site in Europe in 2012. Not only in
developed country does Amazon have an influential power on market: In India, it has
overtaken other local rivals both in web and mobile traffic. In Japanese market, also
Amazon has attracted a wide customer base and attained the largest web access as an
online retailing shop in 2015. Our study could provide guidelines for multinational
companies planning to enter developing markets as well as local companies to protect
their market share against MNCs.
1
“Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2020 (in billion U.S. dollars)”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/
2
Ecommerce News Europe https://ecommercenews.eu/
5Our study focused on the customers who had never used online shopping, which
previous studies had not considered as an influencing factor. In the analytic part, two-
staged data collection methodology was adapted to clarify 1) which Ecommerce website
Japanese customers preferred when they did online shopping for the first time, and 2)
which features led them to make first time online purchasing. After the data collection,
we analyzed the reason why Amazon was able to attract more Ecommerce beginners
than other local competitors.
The structure of this paper is as follows: In chapter 2, we review existing
literatures on Ecommerce and Amazon. It has four sections such as the overview of
Amazon and Ecommerce market in Japan, and the literature on common belief in the
reason why Amazon prospered, switching cost of Ecommerce, and then the hypothesis
is presented to modify and develop the common belief. Chapter 3 explains data
collection processes and results of the survey. In the last chapter, we discuss about
critical research findings and implications. Also, limits of the research and the future
research directions will be provided.
62. Literature Review and Hypotheses Development
This chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, the overview of
Amazon and Ecommerce market in Japan with comparison in the largest local
competitor Rakuten is explained. The second section will examine previous studies on
the success of Amazon. In the third section, we will look at EC market from the
viewpoint of switching cost and present critical question which imply that the common
belief in the reason why Amazon prospered in Japanese market is quite doubtful.
Lastly, we will draw out hypothesis from these reviews about the genuine reason why
Amazon was successful in Japanese market.
2-1. Overview of Amazon and Ecommerce market in Japan
In this section, the overview of B2C Ecommerce market in Japan with the
comparison between Amazon and Rakuten is to be glanced. First of all, we will
overview the B2C Ecommerce market in Japan. Market Research on Ecommerce in
2016 by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Japan reported the transition of
market size of B2C Ecommerce and Ecommerce conversion rate (Figure 1). The size of
the market has been gradually increasing: It got more than double from 6,088 billion
yen in 2007 to 13,774 billion yen in 2015. Furthermore, EC conversion rate has been
7increasing year after year: it was no more than 2% in 2007 but it had been increased to
be nearly 5% in the year 2015.
Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry Japan (2014 and 2016)” Market
research on Ecommerce”
Which companies contributed to the market expansion? Japan Direct Marketing
Association reported about the rate of utilization of on-line resale companies in 2014.
According to the report, Amazon took the first place both in male and female while
Rakuten got the second place in both. The rate of these two companies are notably high
compared to the others (table 1). The number of accesses is also a key factor to decide
the success of Ecommerce retailing company. In 2015, Amazon was the most visited
8Ecommerce website and the number of accesses was 3,966,110,812 while Rakuten was
a bit less and it was 3,554,603,953. Rakuten market was released in 1997 while
Amazon launched its service in Japan in 2000 (Mochizuki,2013). Taking the rate of
utilization and the number of accesses into consideration, it could be said that Amazon
was able to break the barrier to enter and dominate the market successfully.
Table 1. Top ten on-line shopping companies in Japanese market 2014 (ratio of
utilization)
Men ％ Women %
Amazon 18.1 Amazon 11.3
Rakuten 11.7 Rakuten 8.2
Japanet TAKATA 3.2 Nissen 4.5
Yahoo! Shopping 1.9 Dinos Cecile 3.7
Dinos Cecile 1.4 Senshukai 3.4
Orklinmarketing 1.2 Belluna 2.6
Start Today・ZOZOTOWN 1.1 Japanet TAKATA 1.6
Senshukai 1.0 DHC 1.3
Nissen 1.0 Orbis 1.2
Suntory Wellness 1.0 Start Today・ZOZOTOWN 1.2
Source: JADMA “Consumer report of on-line shopping utilization in 2014”
3
Ecommerce Titans Amazon and Rakuten have 3.5 billion Access Anually
http://www.similar-web.jp/blog/archives/5467
92-2. Common Belief in the Reason why Amazon Prospered in Japanese
Market
Previous studies imply that Amazon was able to dominate the market because it
created higher customer value than Rakuten.
Li and Liu (2016) made a comparison of customer value between Amazon and
Rakuten in qualitative and quantitative analysis. In that research, they developed 18
assessment indexes for Ecommerce website, which is based on 14 items that Kotler and
Keller (2008) introduced as the features online service website must have and 4 added
items to get the framework adapted to contemporary Ecommerce. Amazon and
Rakuten were compared in customer value with these 18 aspects (table 2). This
revealed that Amazon was superior to Rakuten in all the 18 assessed features in
average and there were statistically significant difference in15 out of 18 characters.
The data was plugged in for the customer value equation James et al (2004 p.135) to
measure quantitatively the customer value both EC companies created. They
concluded that Customer value Amazon created were larger than that Rakuten did.
Fujimura (1999) and Ono (2011) mentioned that high customer satisfaction contributes
to increase the sales because it enables the companies to decrease transaction cost and
10to build trust via word-of-mouth. According to Kotler and Keller (2008), customers
optimize the use of searching cost, knowledge and budget, and decide their behavior on
reflecting which company create the largest value. Considering the findings and the
studies on customer satisfaction, it could be said that Amazon was able to dominate the
market because it created higher customer value than Rakuten.
Table 2. 18 assessment indexes for Ecommerce website
Factor Assessment index Gap in average
(AmazonーRakuten)
Service quality 1. Friendly web design .297
2. Reliability of shipping .280
3. Reliability of arriving on time .221
4. Privacy protection .132
5. Reliability of website .151
6. Ease of transaction .157
Process quality 7. Detailed information .023
8.Good selection of products .495
9. Proper personalization .227
10. opportunity to compare products .471
11. Reliability of customer review .070
12. Attitude toward customers .050
1113. Attitude toward problems .119
14. Response to questions .142
15. Quick shipping .265
Price 16. Right price .159
other cost 17. Time efficient .244
18. Easy transaction .344
Source: Li and Liu (2016)
How does Amazon create high customer value? Amazon and Rakuten target the
same customer segmentation; customers who like to buy products cheaply and easily
online instead of being bothered to go to in-store shop (Li and Liu2016). Differentiated
value of Amazon are “large selection of items of more than a hundred million”, “free
shipping”, “quick delivery”, “personalization”, low price”, and “simple buying
experience”. On the other hand, Rakuten’s value is “large selection of item with more
than 170 million”, “rich information as to the products”, “various discount points”. They
revealed that more customers believe amazon sells in cheaper price than Rakuten,
even though a lot of items were actually sold cheaper in Rakuten. Moreover, it would
be indispensable for Rakuten to mark high in the features like “detailed information of
the product” or “selected information of the product” but it was presented that Amazon
was superior in those aspects too. Okumura et al (2011) pointed out that Amazon was
12successful because it maximized the customer value with its strategy such as
fulfillment center (huge packing warehouse), low searching cost searching engine,
shopping recommendation function, and shipping service.
As examined in these previous studies, the strategies of Amazon created a high
customer value and it is accepted by the market. It is commonly accepted that Amazon
was able to dominate the market because the customer value it created is larger than
that the other local competitors.
2-3. Switching Cost of Ecommerce
In the previous section, we reviewed the common belief about Amazon’s market
success as creating higher customer value than competitors. This section examines the
critical question of whether or not high customer value is enough for dominating all
kinds of markets. We paid attention to the fact that Amazon was always a latecomer to
the market. In related with this, Min and Wolfinburger (2002) points out that early
movers generally have larger market share and occupy higher consumer trial and
repeat purchase possibilities than late comers do. This section firstly examines the
13switching cost of Ecommerce market and then reviews the lock-in strategy of EC
companies with the example of Rakuten.
Porter (1980) defined Switching cost as “the onetime costs facing the buyer of
switching from one supplier’s product to another’s”. Furthermore, Klemperer (1987)
pointed out that there are three types of switching costs: transaction costs, learning
costs, and artificial or contractual costs. In detail, transaction costs are costs that
happen when starting a new relationship with a provider and terminating an existing
relationship. And, learning costs are the costs for the customers to reach the same level
of comfort with a new product or service as they had for old ones. Also, artificial
switching costs are created by intentional lock-in strategy of firms and there are also
implicit switching costs related with risk aversion, when the customer is not certain
about the quality of other services (Chen and Hitt, 2002).
When switching costs are significant or the switching processes are painful,
discontented consumers tend to maintain business relationships with existing service
providers (Jackson, 1985; Port, 1980). As a result, it is more difficult for latecomers to
capture the market by taking the customers away from the competitors when the
14switching cost is high (Yazaki, 2005). First movers obviously strive to increase the
switching cost so that they could block the new entry to the market.
How does switching cost work in Ecommerce retailing? Chen and Hitt (2002)
suggested that there is notable evidence of brand loyalty in electronic markets. Also,
Brynjolfsson and Smith (2000) found that customers were not hesitate to pay extra
prices for books when they used the shop they had previously dealt with. It was also
represented that 70% of the CD and book shoppers are loyal to just one site and
customers have a tendency to look for fewer sites as they have more experience with
Ecommerce (Johnson et al.,2000). It could be explained by the tactics the Ecommerce
retailing firms had invented to retain customers and develop higher barriers.
Considering literatures above, it is implied that there is a high switching cost
among EC companies. We will see how each firm locks in their customers in B2C
Ecommerce market with the example of Rakuten.
Lock-in strategy is a systematic framework of strategies to maintain a long-term
relationship with customers (Nakagawa et al, 2001). There are seven strategies to lock
15in customers; intimacy lock-in, membership lock-in, convenience lock-in, brand lock-in,
learning lock-in, community lock-in, and series lock-in. As to Ecommerce companies,
out of these seven strategies, membership lock-in, convenience lock-in, learning lock in,
community lock-in should be considered.
In detail, firstly, membership lock-in optimizes the human nature of avoiding
making a loss. Rakuten strongly push ahead the use of Rakuten credit card and they
give out a coupon point depending on how much the card holders make a purchase on
Rakuten. Giving a coupon point is effective to heavy users as the value of the point
rises exponentially. In addition to that, membership lock-in allows companies to
compile a large amount of data about who the customers are, where, when and what
they buy. Rakuten practices some promotion campaigns and closed campaigns utilizing
the customer data. By membership lock-in, Rakuten treats the heavy users well and
lock in them by using the data attained from customer ‘purchasing experience.
Secondly, convenience lock-in has two different types; one-stop type and filling-
type. One-step type of convenience lock-in improves convenience by showing all the
products on one spot. Rakuten practices this strategy online.
16Thirdly, learning lock-in refers to the strategy which utilizes the human nature
that keeps using one service when they are used to it. Consumers are locked in when
they learn how to use a service, get used to it and pay the sunk cost. Since Ecommerce
is a new way of purchasing, it can be inferred the existence of high learning cost.
Lastly, community lock-in aims to lock in customers strongly by increasing the
number of participants. When a de facto standard sets in a community the members
stop to think about changing the service provider. As more and more people have start
having the access to the internet, more and more online communities appeared.
Rakuten created several cyber communities such as Rakuten market, Rakuten travel,
and electronic money and aims to have the community members belong to several
communities. It is what they call “Rakuten Economic Block” and it is the very
community lock-in.
As we have seen so far in this section, consumers tend to keep buying from one
particular service provider because it takes some additional cost to switch. EC
companies, including the largest local B2C Ecommerce platform in Japan, practice
several strategies to lock in the customers to maintain their loyalties. Under those
17circumstances, we could assume that Ecommerce market has a high switching cost and
there are some significant first mover advantages.
2-4. Hypothesis Development
Since Ecommerce companies lock in customers strongly, it is not easy for a late
comer to take share and dominate the market. It has been commonly accepted that
Amazon was able to dominate Japanese market because it created the higher customer
value than the competitors, but we find that the common belief does not explain the
success of Amazon in a convincing way. Because, it is considered as ex-port explanation
about Amazon’s market success, without necessary investigation on the firm’s early
market entry and the process of business expansion We hypothesize that Amazon was
successful in attracting the consumers who had never used online shopping and
incresed the market share while it expanded the market size itself. This hypothesis
was based on the premises that 1) there are only two ways to acquire a new customer;
taking away customers from the competitor or encouraging the customers who never
participated in the market to join in, and 2) it takes substantial cost to switch from a
EC site to another. In other words, we assume that Amazon intentionally or
unintentionally could attract the entry users, encouraged them to join in the EC
18market, and it expanded the EC market while Amazon itself grew. In the following
chapter, we will clarify 1) whether or not Amazon really attracted the Ecommerce
entry users in Japan and 2) which aspects of Amazon influenced the customer’s
decision.
193. Analysis
3-1. Methodology
A two-staged data collection methodology was adapted to figure out the situation
where customers made an online purchase for the first time. In the first stage,
interviews were conducted to verify the reason why consumers used online retailing
instead of in-store shopping for the first time.
20The list of questionnaire items was extracted from Consumer Affairs Agency
report about the reason why consumers buy online instead of offline. Assuming the
reasons that consumers buy on Ecommerce site have something to do with the reasons
that they made a first purchase on online shopping, prototype questionnaire was made
based on the report. Sixteen university students majoring business management
participated interview in this stage. During the procedure interviewees were asked
which Ecommerce website they firstly used, what category of product they bought and
why they made a decision to buy online. After the evaluation, interviewees were asked
21to add and delete items and correct the wording so that the questionnaire is properly
set for first Ecommerce purchase. This process removed three items, added three items
and all the wordings were corrected. In addition to that, questionnaire was changed to
allow the interviewees to select one or more items instead of requiring them to select
three, because some respondents have one clear reason while others have more than
three reasons. Also, another section to ask the main EC website the respondents were
using was added to make sure if each Ecommerce company was successful in locking in
customers. The questionnaire was modified and presented for the second stage
assessment. In the second stage, uniform questionnaires were spread online. The
questionnaire was written in Japanese so that the data is exclusively about Japanese
market.
The questionnaire was sent to those who have an experience to make an online
purchasing. Most respondents were in their early twenties. We admit that it was a
convenience sampling but we do not suppose this sample as significantly biased
because aside from the daily buying behavior the reason why they used online
shopping for the first time is considered to be similar across generations. The
questionnaire was available from November 2, 2016 to November 7,2016. Out of 119
22questionnaires returned, 3 were unusable; therefore, the number of valid response was
116.
3-2. Results
Out of 116 valid responses, 81% of respondents purchased on Amazon when they
did online shopping for the first time, followed by Rakuten, and Yahoo! Shopping with
13.8% and 2.6% respectively. It reveals that more than 95% of respondents selected one
of the three mega Ecommerce platforms for the first online purchasing experience. The
result also shows that quite high percentage of people not used to purchasing online
visited Amazon for the first EC experience (Figure 2).
23Source: Authors
Also, the respondents rated Amazon as the most frequently used B2C Ecommerce
platform and the ratio was 83.6%, followed by Rakuten and Yahoo! Shopping and the
ratio is 6.9% and 2.6% respectively. Lock-in ratio, which is defined by the rate of people
who kept purchasing on an online shop that they bought on for the first EC experience,
was 78.3% overall. This reveals that the customers who were not accustomed to online
shopping had a tendency to keep using one particular website for a long time (Figure
3).
Source: Authors
24The most selected reason why the respondents bought online instead of offline for
the first online purchase was that it was cheaper with the rate of 53.4%. The second
most selected answer was that they thought they could find the goods they wanted to
buy (44%). As to two answers, different EC websites would have different competences.
The third most-selected answer was that they could buy without taking care of time
(32.8%), followed by that it would not take time or money to go to in-store shopping and
that it was a bother to go out (22.4% and 21.6% respectively). All the Ecommerce
retailing shop meet these three features (Figure 4).
Source: Authors
254. Conclusion and Discussion
In the previous chapter, it was figured out that most Ecommerce entry users in
Japan experienced the first online purchasing on Amazon, and “price” and “good
selection of products” were the keys to attract them. The result shows that Amazon
was successful in approaching the Ecommerce entry users. In this chapter, we will
discuss the reason why Amazon managed to attract them from two view points;
business model and customer acquisition strategy.
First of all, price of Amazon is to be discussed. Most EC entry users used Amazon
and a lot of them made the decision according to the price of the product. Thus, we
suppose that Amazon was successful in projecting the image of cheap price to the
consumers regardless of the reality. Li and Liu (2016) also revealed that consumers in
Japan believe that they could buy goods on Amazon cheaper than on Rakuten. As to
Ecommerce, price can be divided into three parts; product price, coupon point and
shipping cost. We will discuss these three elements.
How did Amazon project an image of cheap price to customers? The fact that ｔhe
business model of Amazon aims for scale merit could be one of the most important
26factors to contribute to it. Okumura et al (2011) mentioned that Amazon trimmed
inventory costs by developing huge fulfillment centers and holding tremendous amount
of goods in stock. Moreover, Amazon obtains a great bargaining power on purchasing
because it could be a major buyer to suppliers. In addition to that, third-party sellers
on Amazon also seem to contribute to lowering the price. Unlike Rakuten, Amazon does
not charge fixed store opening fee to individual seller, which resulted in a price war
because more and more third-party sellers could participate in Amazon market place.
Since consumers can compare the sellers on one webpage on Amazon, they have an
opportunity to buy in the best price.
Next, we will consider the coupon point. According to Li and Liu (2016), “It seems
that Amazon sells cheaper but when taking coupon point into consideration, some
stores on Rakuten sell cheaper than Amazon”. Rakuten, as “Rakuten Economic Block”
explains, practices the strategy to give the customers bargain based on the coupon
points. However, discount by coupon point is thought to be less attractive to entry
users because the value of coupon point increases in an exponential manner as the
customers buy more, but the entry users have not decided on commitment to
Ecommerce. Instead, they seemed to prefer the discount in product price.
27We will examine the shipping cost of Amazon. Mitani (2014) pointed out that
Amazon managed a free shipping through vast investment to large fulfillment center
and business cooperation with major transportation firms. On the other hand, Rakuten
has difficulty in lowering the shipping cost because it basically does not develop a huge
fulfillment center with its business model.
Next, we will consider how Amazon could project an image of a wide selection of
products to customers. As a matter of fact, Rakuten has a superiority in the number of
products sold: Amazon sells 100 million items while Rakuten sells 170 million items.
However, the study of Li and Liu (2016) revealed that consumers actually value higher
on Amazon’s selection of products; thus, we suppose that Amazon managed to project
an image of wide selection of products to customers. Amazon are practicing what is
called long tail business model and we consider this business model as a key of image
strategy of Amazon. Long tail business model is a business model in which the
company stocks not only large volumes of popular items but also small volumes of
hard-to-find and non-hit items, supposing that there is a decent amount of demand in
Ecomemrce market with enormous number of customers (Otani, 2012). Quite a number
28of EC entry users were expected to join in EC market when they were not able to find a
product they needed in in-store shop nearby. Long tail business model could provide
those hard-to find items too. On the other hand, only large third-party sellers
participate in Rakuten platform and they tend to stock popular items because of the
distribution and inventory costs. We suppose this is the reason why Amazon could
project the image of good selection of items while Rakuten comparatively could not.
So far, we have seen the business model of Amazon which seemed to attract the
entry users to Ecomemrce. From now on, we will discuss the customer acquisition
strategy of Amazon. Amazon is investing a lot in advertising on major web portal sites
and on associate program. In the former promotions, consumers have more chances to
see Amazon when they search for items that they are interested in, and the latter
promotion pays to the promoters such as bloggers or other large web sites for
promoting the purchasing on Amazon. Since Amazon pioneered this promotional
practice we could suppose that it intentionally targeted the wide range of internet
users.4
4 http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fri/report/cyber/practice/casestudies/amazon02.html
29From these facts, we conclude that Amazon was successful in projecting an image
of its “cheap price” and “good selection of products” even to customers who had never
used online shopping. Thus, our hypothesis that Amazon attracted the EC entry users
to join in EC market and got the dominant position as latecomer is considered
supported.
Our study cast a question on the common belief of existing studies that Amazon
got a dominant position because it created higher customer value than that of
competitors, and that’s why Amazon could take away the customer base from them
with critical perspective on these common belief, we revealed that it is also a key to
success that Amazon was able to attract the massive of EC entry users and obtained a
large base of light customers, and locked them in. We would like to emphasize that it is
crucial for companies in the market of high switching cost to practice a strategy to
encourage the entry users to participate in the market.
Our research provides several practical implications. Multinational EC companies
that intend to expand overseas like Amazon should not only try to take away the
30customers of competitors, but also to attract potential customers, especially in a
market of high switching cost. It would be especially effective when the company is a
late comer. Secondly, local first mover company like Rakuten should obviously practice
a strong strategy to lock in customers but they also should try to seek for the ways to
attract more customers into the market. In fact, Rakuten obtained the large customer
base and it strove to lock in them but it failed to develop a new customer base: That is
why Amazon got the dominant position as it does at the present time. Thus, it is
advisable to first mover company to set multi-layer strategy, that lock in loyal
customers as well as attract potential customers.
We need to admit that there are several limitations in our research. Although we
collected first handed data using interviews and questionnaires, most of our discussion
is based on secondary data. Even though the secondary data was convincing and
effective enough to support our hypothesis, it would confirm our research result further
if we interview the managers of the company. Also, since we asked the past experience
in the questionnaire there might be some possible memory bias. Future study need to
make up these limitations with more number samples.
31Our study analyzed the customer acquisition process of Amazon in Japanese
market. We suppose there are two future research directions concerning our study.
Firstly, it is worthwhile to examine if Amazon in other markets such as U.K. France,
India practiced the same strategy to obtain the dominant position. Secondly, it also
should be elaborated if our findings could be applied in other industry of high switching
cost like mobile providing industry. We expect that future researches will reveal if our
findings can be generalized in other markets and industries.
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web データ
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年 11 月 23 日アクセス）
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http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fri/report/cyber/practice/casestudies/amazon02.htmlhtt
p://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fri/report/cyber/practice/casestudies/amazon02.html
（2016 年 11 月 23 日アクセス）
38Appendix
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