On cross-border e-commerce platforms, Japanese products occupy almost half of the market, but downstream consumption drives upstream attention rather than brand owners. This makes a strange phenomenon appear in the current cross-border e-commerce market - no one knows the products that are really best-selling in Japan, while those poorly-selling but high-profit products are pushed to the front by dealers or buyers, and may also be mixed with false and exaggerated publicity.
Japanese Tao is wary of false propaganda and profitable products
The reporter learned that for example, a domestic online hot-selling product, "Xingu Enzyme", has a purchase price ranging from 148 yuan to 208 yuan. But according to insiders, "In fact, it is a brand established by a Chinese company in Japan. Since it directly copied similar Japanese products, there is almost no R&D cost, and the cost price is estimated to be only around 30 yuan."
In order to sell Japanese enzyme products, online purchasing agents and buyers claim that enzymes can defend against and even treat cancer. This kind of publicity is misleading not only to consumers but also to manufacturers.
An Jie, general manager of Shanghai Boluode, a Japanese cross-border trade company, believes that judging from the current overall development, the China-Japan cross-border e-commerce supply chain has developed to a very efficient stage. Driven by market demand, the product purchase channels have almost opened up the entire Japanese distribution system. Except for a few high-end products, most products can be supplied in large quantities.
However, he also pointed out that the Sino-Japanese cross-border e-commerce market is a model of promoting upstream from downstream. In other words, brands have not yet promoted their careers and their products have been best-selled. For brands, they cannot control the marketing behavior of domestic agents and channel providers, and lack direct communication channels with consumers.
"This may lead to vicious price competition, channel confusion, breeding of counterfeit goods, excessive speculation and information deviations, leading to complete denial of brands by consumers, resulting in irreparable commercial losses," he said.
For example, Takeda Pharmaceuticals is the 18th-ranked company in the world's top 50 manufacturing companies and is even better in the Asia-Pacific region. However, its products are rare on a large number of cross-border e-commerce platforms. On the contrary, some expensive products that are unknown in Japan are best-selling on the platform.
Why is this? Because Takeda Pharmaceutical's products are relatively affordable and have thin profits, many buyers or dealers are unwilling to purchase goods, but choose to use the natural barrier of information asymmetry to introduce higher profitable products to the market.
Japanese brand owners begin to pay attention to China's access
From the above, it can be seen that the various chaos in Ritao are caused by two key factors: one is the asymmetry of consumer information, and the other is the lack of brand owner roles.
However, the reporter learned that in Japan, there are not many cases of direct cooperation between brands and cross-border e-commerce. Even some companies that look very young in Japan have a history of more than 30 years, and some companies that look very small have a history of hundreds of years. These brands are relatively conservative and steady, and have low awareness of e-commerce.
But in recent years, changes brought about by the Chinese market have caused this phenomenon to loosen.
Today, the consumption capacity of Chinese consumers in the Japanese offline market is obvious to all. According to data from the Japan Tourism Bureau, Chinese tourists to Japan in 2015 doubled compared with 2014, reaching 5 million.
Dentsu Agnes CEO Kihiro Yamaki often comes to China for business trips and is still surprised by the huge downstream demand. "Last year, the total amount of Chinese consumers in cross-border consumption exceeded 2 trillion yen (about 130.2 billion yuan), which is a very amazing number and is still growing rapidly." He pointed out that such a huge market is greatly attracting the attention of Japanese companies to the Chinese market.
At present, Boluode, one of the cross-border communication partners of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, said that they have joined forces with Dentsu Angis Group to ensure that all products sold are officially authorized by Japanese brands. This not only ensures that the products are genuine, but also provides a complete sales and brand communication strategy for the brand party.
Yamaki Kihiko told reporters that Japanese companies generally have two ways to distribute products to the outside world. One is to directly authorize the brand, and the other is to find first-level dealers. The supply of goods through these two channels can effectively prevent counterfeit goods caused by interfering goods.
In fact, on the one hand, Japanese merchants are actively opening up the Chinese channel, and on the other hand, they will also encounter specific problems such as insufficient selling of certain "hot-up" goods, inability to keep up with production, and retailers' price cuts. "So we want to bring more comprehensive Japanese products to Chinese consumers, rather than focusing on certain popular products."
The new policy is conducive to legal cross-border e-commerce
On April 8 this year, the state issued the "List of Cross-border E-commerce Retail Imported Products"; on May 25, enterprises were given a one-year transition period for relevant regulatory requirements with approval from the State Council. The cross-border e-commerce 408 reform can be said to have caused shock in the entire industry, and the customs clearance order has become a major criticism.
In response, Yuan Wei, vice president of Shanghai Cross-border Communication, said, "The important reason for the difficulty in clearing is that the information is incomplete, and behind this is the sequelae caused by the lack of brand authorization. Therefore, cross-border communication platforms tend to directly cooperate with brand owners or first-level agents."
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