Japanese electric trader Rakuten: The most ferocious international expansion

This is the fifth article on the open platform of the Puji-she, focusing on Japan's Rakuten today, it is a comprehensive enterprise, the core business includes E-commerce, tourism, credit and payment, financial securities, news portals. This article focuses on Rakuten's E-commerce business, Japan's largest market Rakuten Ichiba (Lotte Market).

The "American Center theory" in the internet has affected a lot of people, in the field of E-commerce, industry practitioners and researchers generally only focus on the U.S. Amazon, EBay, as well as China's local Taobao, Beijing east, the world's other countries or regions of the electricity business is quite ignored. The Japanese market has three big electric business enterprise, is Rakuten, Yahoo Japan and Amazon Japan respectively, according to the turnover view Rakuten maintains the big leading edge; and Rakuten ambitious and motivated, shouting the slogan "Striving to become the world" No.1 Internet services Company "(strive to become the world's largest Internet service companies), under the encouragement of such slogans, Rakuten in recent years has been a crazy international expansion, trying to put their own unique B2B2C model to a broader market.

A brief introduction to the development of Rakuten

Rakuten is very complicated and suitable for big case study, in this paper, the Popularization Society (PUJI-SHE) adheres to the principle of "simplicity" and simply studies it. Founded in February 1997, Rakuten was later in the Amazon (1994) and ebay (1995), Taobao (2003) and Jingdong (2004) Earlier in China, which largely reflected the development of Japan's Internet late in the US but earlier than in China. Not long after the establishment of Rakuten in April 2000 on the Japanese Stock exchange Jasdaq, after Rakuten began business expansion: December 2000 acquisition of the news portal infoseek,2001 annual online tourism business, 2003 into the securities sector, 2004 into the bank card business, 2007 into the field of communications, the beginning of the electronic banking business in 2009, the online e-book business in 2012. After more than 10 years, Rakuten gradually developed into a comprehensive group of companies with a number of business.

Rakuten Business has 82 million users, more than half of the Japanese in the use of Rakuten services; from a revenue point of view, Total revenue for the entire Rakuten was $4.63 billion in 2012, with a net profit of $244 million, and 2012 Rakuten's partial turnover amounted to 1.446 trillion yen (about 88.8 billion RMB), an annual increase of 15.3%, and the proportion of electricity business revenue to turnover of about 8%, With about 120 billion yen (7 billion RMB), there are about 13 million active users (at least once per quarter) of the electric business, and Rakuten has 10,351 full-time employees by the end of June 2013. From the above data can be seen, although Rakuten trading in Japan's electricity market in the first, but its electric business and Amazon, EBay, Taobao compared to a small gap, according to the turnover of the east and Beijing at the same level.

The international expansion of Rakuten

There are three big power companies in the Japanese market: Rakuten, Yahoo Japan, Amazon, but the Japanese market has matured, to continue to maintain growth must expand the international market, in the expansion of international markets Rakuten quite bold. In May 2008, Rakuten first expanded its business to Taiwan, and in May 2010 Rakuten officially opened the pace of frantic expansion. In order to smooth internationalization, Rakuten first in the company's internal "English" innovation, requiring all staff must speak English, in two years to participate in TOEIC test and required to score more than 600 points, the higher the level of demand score is also higher;

Employees with Rakuten began to speak English as a language of communication, and their international expansion was carried out aggressively. In July 2010, Rakuten bought the US shopping website Buy.com and acquired the French shopping website Priceminister in the same month. In June 2011 Rakuten acquired Brazil's Ikeda, then transformed it into a Rakuten Brazil, which acquired Tradoria Gmhh, the Rakuten in Germany, in July and the play.com of the UK in October. 2012 Rakuten continued to exert force, January acquisition of the Canadian E-book company kobo,5 Month to invest in the U.S. social network pinterest,6 month acquired the Spanish video-on-demand service website Wuaki. In May 2013, Rakuten acquired most of the U.S. shopping site daily Grommet, June, the acquisition of the United States Warehousing logistics company webgistix,9 Monthly acquisition of Singapore video site Viki,rakuten is also scheduled to be launched in Singapore before the end of 2013 website.

The B2B2C mode of Rakuten

Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani (Hiroshi Mikitani) has lived and studied in the United States, Rakuten the overall imitation of the ebay model and style, such as it also has a auction business, income from the entry fee (tenant fees), trading Commission and a small number of advertising The difference is that Rakuten is more stringent with sellers, requiring B-class sellers (although many B-class sellers are small). When it was first established in 1997, there were only 13 sellers. By the end of 2012, the number of Rakuten merchants is only more than 40,000, and ebay, Amazon has a huge gap compared to millions of businesses, and the domestic cat has 300,000 merchants, the number of merchants in Beijing East this year will also exceed Rakuten. Strict selection of merchants is the first major feature of the Rakuten model.

Unlike Amazon, which has a product-centric open platform, Rakuten is shop-centric, similar to ebay and the cat, but Rakuten gives the store greater brand exposure and freedom. Rakuten's idea is to serve a good seller, let the seller give full play to the initiative to establish real contact with the buyer. To this end, the seller on the Rakuten shop was encouraged to personalize the design, as far as possible thousands of shops, shops can fully display their brand image, can be done in addition to the domain name is all their own shop publicity page. Rakuten gave the shop full of freedom, in the relaxed rules of the store can operate freely, and even sellers can also through Buymail products to promote users, Rakuten to a certain extent, users and sellers share.

Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani (Hiroshi Mikitani) wrote a book entitled "Marketplace 3.0" to demonstrate that his unique b2b2c is the future of the development of the electric business. In Mikitani's view, the Internet in the 3.0 era was driven by personalization, intelligent search and user behavior, and the integration of E-commerce and social networks is the biggest feature of the 3.0 era, so Rakuten from the outset to encourage sellers and buyers real contact, they have invested in Pinterest such a social network. Sam Mikitani (Hiroshi Mikitani) is very confident of the Rakuten model, and its acquisition of the Electronic business site will generally be transformed into the same model as Rakuten.

Rakuten Opportunities and Challenges

Rakuten shouted the slogan is "strive to become the world's largest Internet service company", which is determined to become the replacement of Amazon. It should be said that Rakuten has its own unique advantages, at least in Japan's electricity market leading position firmly. Moreover, through its "Super Point Program" Project, Rakuten to its various business, enhanced user stickiness while providing consumers with a one-stop Internet service, more than half of the Japanese are Rakuten users. In recent years of international expansion, Rakuten has demonstrated its determination to have business in nearly 30 countries and regions.

Although Rakuten is very fierce, but really to challenge the Amazon, all aspects of the strength is still far away. Amazon's 2012-year sales are nearly 90 billion dollars, about 7 times times the size of Rakuten's, and Rakuten's e-book sector, whose e-reader Kobo shipments are less than the Amazon Kindle's 1/ 10;rakuten bought ads in France and bought Webgistix in the US, trying to launch a challenge to Amazon's prime and FBA logistics services, but until now "Rakuten Super Antananarivo" remains confined to the Japanese market.

Rakuten international expansion has brought huge costs, the international market has been in a loss state, and warehousing logistics investment, but also directly affect the Rakuten profit situation. Rakuten's business is less profitable, relying more on bank and securities business for blood transfusions. Compared with Amazon and ebay, Rakuten volume is also small, the investment in warehousing logistics is a bit powerless; Japan's domestic market has matured, is subject to financial strength, its international expansion in general also to acquire small and medium-sized websites, whether the effect is not yet determined. Moreover, Rakuten to oneself too self-confident, localization or will encounter difficulties, 2010 Rakuten and Baidu in China set up "Le Cool Day" soon after the failure is proof.

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