The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) conducted the FY2013 E-Commerce Market Survey to analyze the current state of the Japanese e-commerce (EC) market. According to the survey, EC market in Japan expanded to 11.2 trillion yen, up by 17.4% compared with the previous year. As for the EC ratio, the ratio of the EC market scale against the total amount of the overall commercial transactions went up 0.6 points from the previous year to 3.7%, proving both the scale of the market and the EC ratio are continuously growing.
EC expanded from last year in most industry sectors, notably in accommodation, travel and restaurant business which grew to be 1.83 trillion yen with 22.1% increase. Its EC ratio went up 1.26 points to 7.38%, marking the highest ratio among retail and service industries. Some of other industries with high EC growth were: medical/accessory retails (220.0 billion yen with 25.8% increase) and pharmaceutical and cosmetic retails (603.0 billion yen with 20.4% increase.) In addition, the domestic market scale of B to B expanded to 186 trillion yen, up by 4.4% from the previous year and the EC ratio went up 0.4points from the previous year to 17.9%.
Looking at the market scale of cross-border EC among Japan, the U.S. and China, the purchase amount by Japanese consumers was 191.5 billion yen, 173.6 billion yen from the U.S. and 17.9 billion yen from China, and this was the least purchase amount among the three countries. Chinese consumers purchased total of 807.2 billion yen from Japanese and U.S. business operators, 390.2 billion yen from Japan and 417.1 billion yen from the U.S., showing that Chinese consumers purchased the largest amount among the three countries. The U.S. consumers purchased 432.3 billion yen from Japan and 287.5 billion yen from China, added up to 719.7 billion yen.
Stated in another way, sales amount of Japanese EC market exporting to China and the U.S. was 822.4 billion yen, while the U.S. was 590.6 billion yen and China was 305.4 billion yen, and the Japanese market turned out to be the largest among the three countries. The survey estimated scale of cross-border EC among Japan, the U.S., and China as of 2020 will be around 4.1 trillion yen at the largest. Purchase amount and sales amount estimated for each country for that case are: purchase amount of 794.2 billion yen and sales amount of 1.75 trillion yen by Japan, purchase amount of 1.84 trillion yen and sales amount of 655.8 billion yen by China and purchase amount of 1.46 trillion yen and sales amount of 1.68 trillion yen by the .U.S.
(Travel Voice Editorial Department)
