Rakuten's CEO on Humanizing E-Commerce: Discovery Service for FIU Libraries. - 3 views
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Amazon and many other companies. I think of those competitors as vending machines: They are hyper-efficient supermarkets with standardized offerings
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If you go to a supermarket or a McDonald's in Japan, you'll find an extremely high level of hospitality and customer service -- in contrast to the atmosphere in most Western markets, where customers are much more focused on speed and convenience.
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I'd learned that it doesn't matter how big your employer is -- what matters is how much value you yourself create. This view is the opposite of how success is seen in Japan, and my family was shocked when I said I was leaving my job in banking.
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Rakuten merchants sell more than 10% of all the wine sold in Japan. They sell cars. They sell a lot of art. Recently they've started selling houses. Food is a really big category, even though nobody believed when we launched that food would become a mail-order business. Expensive chocolates are a very large category on Rakuten, and so is clothing -- 70% to 80% of what I wear most days was bought on the site.
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When people talk about "social shopping" or "social commerce," they're referring to the fact that people like to connect with others for advice about purchases.
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One potential downside of offering a decentralized marketplace with goods from thousands of merchants is that quality or service problems may occur. But Rakuten has found ways to avoid this. We have a tight screening process for people who want to open a store on our site. We monitor transactions. We have a survey program that allows customers to give feedback on shops, and if a shop consistently receives poor ratings and cannot improve, we'll kick it out. If goods don't arrive, we offer a refund.
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ravel websites in Japan are quite different. They're set up so that hotels can edit their pages themselves and tell their own stories. That allows the hotels to make a connection with customers.
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Mikitani believes that human beings need communication and connection. So instead of emphasizing efficiency and convenience, Rakuten tries to create a personalized, bazaarlike shopping experience.
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The article discusses how a service-based approach to e-commerce has tremendous value. The article focus on how Rakuten choose to infuse hospitality services, normally reserved for brick & mortar establishments on internet based business. Affording them the opportunity to generate profits by having access to this type of infrastructure at a fraction of the cost than if delivered in a traditional format.
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I enjoyed reading this article and learning more about Rakuten. Their business approach seems valuable particularly for the culture it serves. Being that he is familiar with Japanese culture and their preference for an interpersonal approach, Hiroshi Mikitani the CEO of Rakuten was able to veer from the norm of a standardized and process-oriented approach and build a successful business. Rakuten platform allows allows hotels to set up so they can edit their pages themselves and tell their own stories, which allows the hotels to make a connection with customers.