E-commerce in Japan

E-commerce

Internet access

Internet penetration in Japan is currently 82.1% and should reach 83.2% by 2021. Smartphone penetration is a lot less (47.8%) but is projected to grow to 54.4% in the next four years. There were 103.89 million internet users in Japan in 2017, and this figure is projected to reach 104.27 million by 2022. Japan has the 7th fastest internet connection speed in the world (20.2 Mbps) – average internet speeds are higher in developed Asian countries. Japan had the third largest rate of high broadband connectivity (73%) as of 2017. The most popular search engines are Google (69.79%), Yahoo! (25.92%), Bing (3.53%), Baidu (0.44%), Never (0.1%) and DuckDuckGo (0.08%).

E-commerce market

There were nearly 89 million online shoppers in Japan in 2017. That same year, the Japanese B2C e-commerce turnover grew by 16% to US$ 79,247 million. Japan had an online population of 116.8 million people who were aged 15 and older. While Japanese consumers have been rather reluctant to buy foreign products in the past, they have become progressively more open to them over time. Japanese consumers are highly diverse in their interests and tastes, which range from traditional needs to more westernised desires. User penetration is at 66.6% in 2018 and it is expected to hit 72.6% in 2022. Revenue in the e-commerce market is expected to amount to US$ 105.1 million in 2018. The market is expected to show an annual growth rate of 6.2% resulting in a market volume of US$ 133.6 in 2022.

Social media

52.56 million people in Japan are active monthly social network users, with the most popular ones being Facebook (39.32%), Twitter (29.08%), Pinterest (13.73%), YouTube (10.62%), Tumblr (2.58%) and Instagram (2.29%). Their growth is low and there are signs of little time being spent on the social networks. Facebook is showing stagnation in Japan. On the other hand, Instagram is taking off, pushing beyond 10 million users in Japan this year.