As the global online retail market continues to multiply, Japan, the fourth largest B2C E-Commerce market worldwide, is predicted to grow at small double-digit rates from 2015 to 2020, reflecting an overall increase in E-Commerce market sales in Japan. Furthermore, due to a growth in the smartphone penetration rate, M-Commerce sales in Japan are expected to increase faster than the total E-Commerce market sales and cover half of all online retail sales by 2020.

The trend of cross-border online shopping reveals the drivers as to why consumers in Japan are increasingly making the bulk of online purchases from retailers in the USA and China. A survey showed that Japan had the world’s highest share of shoppers that when making purchases online from merchants in other countries, did so in cross-border marketplaces. In addition, the share of households in Japan making these purchases greatly improved yearly from 2011 to 2015. Furthermore, physical goods make up the majority of the E-Commerce sector in Japan with clothing as the major product category with nearly a fifth of all sales, followed by home appliances, food and beverages.

Large marketplaces and online shopping malls lead the E-Commerce market in Japan, having paved the way for half of E-Commerce sales in 2015. The top player benefitting from this growth in 2015 included Rakuten, with nearly a third of E-Commerce market sales and with sales up by small double digits, followed by Amazon Japan, Apple and Yahoo! Japan Shopping among others.

For more information about E-Commerce in Japan, see our full report “Japan B2C E-Commerce Sales Forecasts: 2016 to 2020”.