Japanese Online Mall Plans US Expansion
Rakuten, one of Japan’s largest online shopping destinations, has announced its intent to expand services into the US, Europe and China.
“We need to go overseas,” president Hiroshi Mikitani told Kyodo News, saying that he expects the number of online shoppers in Japan to begin decreasing due to the country’s low fertility rate. According to Kyodo, the company’s mall service serves about 18 million Japanese customers.
The Tokyo-based Rakuten Inc. runs several portals and online businesses, including the Rakuten Ichiba virtual mall. In 2005, Rakuten bought US-based online advertising company LinkShare.
According to the Xinhua Financial Network, Rakuten is also exploring China as a possible market. “We want to do e-commerce in China but we have only started to look into it,” said an unnamed official. Rakuten bought a Chinese-based travel agency in 2004. Developing an e-commerce business on the mainland would put the company into direct competition with come of China’s giants like Alibaba.com and Sohu.com.
Earlier this month, Japanese financial news publication Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that Rakuten would begin launching foreign services in the spring of 2008. The company will be setting up an office in Boston to begin localizing the mall service for different US regions and increasing its staff in UK and European offices.
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