Marketing Research Proposal - Japanese Yoghurt

Introduction

Tomorrow, we shall not eat only to feed, but also to remain in shape. The new food tendencies, evoked during the last show of food-processing industries, are significant, in this respect: the consumers look less for the pleasure of the senses (34 % instead of 43 % previous year), but are more worry about their health (21 % instead of 18 %), and their shape (23 % against 19 %) because of the recent food scandals, the harmlessness of food.

We are a marketing team who are working for a world leader of the yoghourt market, which wants entering a new market in Japan: the « cosmetic yoghourt » (It is about the market of "cosmetic food"). This innovative product which allies cosmetic and dairy product knows a striking success in the world except in Japan where the product doesn’t exist because of the complexities of the Japanese yoghourt market. It gets the domain of the well-being and the beauty. With this product, our company has the opportunity to become a leader of this new market because there are no competitors for the moment!

Research Question

The attitudes and opinions of the yogurt consumers from Japan market regarding to the cosmetic yogurt.

Literature Review

The Japanese market

Many small retailers altered their product lines to diversify and have begun to carry locally produced specialty items which are too uneconomic for large retail stores to include as part of their product lines (Larke 1992). In fact, most of the small Japanese retailers are specialized and carry relatively deep assortments to satisfy local demand. In other words, Japanese demand for more diversified products may have led to the various establishments of small but specialized retail shops.

The dominance of small stores in the Japanese retail sector often hampers the new market entrants, such as foreign firms, from selling their products to Japanese consumers, because small stores tend to keep only a limited selection of merchandise and consequently cannot afford to carry foreign products (Hokey 1996).

Large food supermarkets base competitiveness on relative size and profitability rankings. The focus is on growth through diversification and this has led to experimentation with various retail formats such as mail order, home sales, catalogue sales and the superstore concept (Goldman 1992). Furthermore, the “Large-scale Retail Store Law” has limited the number of competing large supermarkets in each trading area, resulting in local monopolies for the existing chains. All this has led to generally uniform prices for the same items across store types. Various studies have found prices in small stores to be quite similar to those in chain supermarkets (Goldman 1992).

The term “supermarket”, in Japan, is not necessarily a synonym for food retailer. This retail format can deal in food, clothing or general merchandise. There are approximately 4,500 food supermarkets in Japan. Also included in this number is what is also known in Japan as “superstores”. This type of retail format used in the food industry are multi-levelled food (30 -40 per cent of sales) and general merchandise stores concentrated in the cities. This “urban resort” format has become more popular than the concept of a suburban shopping centre owing to the fact that it adapts to Japan’s high population density and the high cost of land (Nancy 1997).

The Japanese buyer behaviour

The Japanese market does have some features that are unique. It is usual for Japanese women to have control of household expenditure. Consequently, women make the choice of many household items.

There are two population groups that have become more important in recent years. The first group comprises young working people who are deferring marriage until later in life and therefore have more years where they have larger amounts of disposable income to spend. Their taste is usually cosmopolitan and they are interested in a range of Western consumer goods. These young consumers have been called the shinjinrui meaning new race. The girls are delaying marriage in order to enjoy more independence. If they have good jobs and they continue to live at home with their parents, then they are able to have more disposable income to spend on consumer goods (Keith 2001).

Although it is true that many Western trends have become apparent in the Japanese consumer culture recently owing to an increase in affluence, the behavioural patterns and values of the consumers have not changed significantly. Some of the observed trends in Japan are: “widespread ownership of western products such as cars and various appliances, individualization of consumer needs, a fragmentation of the homogeneous middle class, an increased number of women working outside the home, and emphasis on convenience, fashion, up- staleness, and leisure” (Goldman 1992). All of these carry implications for changing food consumption patterns.

Owing to notorious traffic congestion and preference for fresh products, Japanese consumers tend to shop in the immediate vicinity of their homes.

Koyama (1985) observes that Japanese consumers tend to possess many different items at home due in part to the extended family structure; for example, an average Japanese household keeps about 800 belongings, while a German or French counterpart has around 600 belongings. This suggests that Japanese consumers often require more diversified product lines (Koyama 1985).