유통산업의 변화가 일본 제조기업의 경쟁력에 미친 영향: 가전 및 화장품 산업을 중심으로

Abstract

According to Hitaka’s (2012) research, the return on sales and return on total assets of Japanese companies have been gradually decreasing over the 35 years period between 1981 and 2014. So why did the competitiveness of Japanese companies, which have been praised for their Japanese management style worldwide, start decreasing since the eighties? The drop in competitiveness of Japanese companies has been explained in various ways. However, this paper explains it through the changes of the Japanese distribution system. In a value chain of a manufacturing company, the distribution system is responsible for downstream activities. Any change of this system has a huge impact on the competitiveness of a manufacturing firm. Especially for Japanese companies, which have created a distribution-dependent business model through Keiretsu during the Japanese economic growth period, and have consequently grown based on it. But huge changes took place in 1980's. First of all, Japanese consumers changed. They have amassed customer experiences and became price-sensitive. Especially in the nineties, with the persisting recession, customers began looking for cheap prices. Secondly, such a change in consumers’ behavior caused rapid growth of “category killer” and discounter stores in the distribution sector. These were no longer sales agents for the manufacturing companies but rather purchasing agents for consumers. As a result, the Japanese companies’ business model, which was based on exclusive transactions and sales at a fixed-price, slowly collapsed. The high profits that these companies used to enjoy thanks to the traditional business model started decreasing. And all this consequently lead to the weakening of Japanese firms’ competitiveness. This paper presents the explanation as above based on case studies of some of Japan’s most representative industries: consumer-electronics and cosmetics.