Mobile commerce in Japan - statistics & facts
Mobile commerce makes up over half of online merchandise sales in Japan’s B2C e-commerce market, but Japanese consumers remain the least active mobile shoppers in the APAC region. Although they value convenience in their shopping journey and spend most of their time online on mobile devices, this does not necessarily translate to the completion of all transactions on these devices. The market is in a transition phase, in which over 41 percent of mobile owners still complete their shopping journey on personal computers. However, shopping platforms are investing in the optimization of their app environment to win over new users amid a declining PC ownership rate.
The mobile payment segment has been centered around QR code payments, which have found popularity as a cashless payment method in in-store shopping. Coupled with a growing consumer base in online banking and banking apps, Japanese users are able to complete their customer journey online and offline with their mobile devices.
The future growth of mobile commerce is reliant on the improvement and the realization of a fully seamless shopping experience from discovery to checkout. Although only emerging in Japan, live and social commerce could enable online retailers to grow in the mobile commerce space, by combining social media consumption and brand discovery on mobile devices with a smooth shopping journey on a single platform.
The pillars of mobile commerce
The widespread adoption of mobile internet-enabled devices in Japan has laid the foundation for a mobile content-related market, in which mobile commerce occupies an almost 70 percent share. Drivers of the shopping segment have been marketplace operators like Rakuten and Amazon. Particularly, Rakuten has been growing the prevalence of mobile devices in its financial and e-commerce businesses, as the mobile ratio in Rakuten Ichiba’s gross merchandise sales hovered around 80 percent in 2023.The mobile payment segment has been centered around QR code payments, which have found popularity as a cashless payment method in in-store shopping. Coupled with a growing consumer base in online banking and banking apps, Japanese users are able to complete their customer journey online and offline with their mobile devices.
The race for a seamless shopping journey
Mobile commerce has been established as a distinct segment in Japan’s e-commerce landscape, with convenience and flexibility being the strength of the online shopping subset. However, the cost of shrinking shopping experiences to pocket-size is user-friendliness. Japanese consumers value price comparison and review sites as an information source in online brand research. Service providers have invested in optimizing website layouts and app interfaces to suit mobile devices, but switching between services impacts the user experience of apps. These limitations along with a more casual shopping behavior akin to virtual window-shopping affect the cart abandonment rate on mobile devices.The future growth of mobile commerce is reliant on the improvement and the realization of a fully seamless shopping experience from discovery to checkout. Although only emerging in Japan, live and social commerce could enable online retailers to grow in the mobile commerce space, by combining social media consumption and brand discovery on mobile devices with a smooth shopping journey on a single platform.
