The newest report published by Hamburg-based secondary market research company yStats.com, “Japan B2C E-Commerce Sales Forecasts: 2015 to 2018”, projects that the fourth most attractive B2C E-Commerce market in the world will observe low two-digit average annual growth rates, but will likely lose a small fraction of its overall share of global B2C E-Commerce.
Cited by major primary research sources as the fourth biggest and also fourth most attractive B2C E-Commerce market worldwide, Japan is expected to trail China in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of B2C E-Commerce rankings, until 2018. Compared to other global market competitors, Japan is projected to rank between 4th and 7th in annual growth rate predicted for B2C E-Commerce sales from 2015 to 2018, of the top 8 markets, suggesting that China, the UK and the United States will continue to outpace Japan in sales until 2018.
While forecasts for B2C E-Commerce sales and growth values vary among primary research sources, B2C E-Commerce in Japan is forecasted to increase its share of total retail sales, though experiencing a small, fractional loss on share of global B2C E-Commerce sales, similar to that of most other top B2C E-Commerce markets, minus China.
Prominent trends observed among online shoppers in Japan include mobile shopping, with approximately one-third of smartphone users reportedly purchasing products online via their mobile devices as of 2014. The most popular purchased products included “Groceries”, “Fashion and Apparel”, “Books” and “Services”, each purchased by over half of online shoppers. Pure play online retailers were by far the most popular online shopping destinations in Japan, including major players like Amazon, Rakuten Ichiba, and Yahoo! Shopping.
