The real potential of Japan's e-commerce is being realized now. Because of that, there is a lot of work and effort being put in by the Japanese and foreign investors to expand the market. Though the Japanese were late in discovering the effectiveness and true potential of commerce online, they are now catching up and moving along with full force. Considering that internet started out in Japan as an experimental test to share information from one computer to another, they for one should take advantage of things that the internet can do for their business.

Although e-commerce is technically just a small part of what the internet can do, it has been a big influence in Japan's business outlook and marketing.   The internet has forced a change and restructured the Japanese economy as a whole; overall communications get streamlined and transaction costs get lowered.  Japanese access the internet mostly through their mobile phones.  It is cheaper and more convenient this way.  Internet was first introduced in the mid 80s, but Japan has opened their door to this just a few years back.  But at the rate that Japan is going, there true potential and promise in their online world.

The advantage of this whole internet surge is that Japan's potential for e-commerce is huge. And by huge, we mean huge savings on money yielded for the cost of conducting and initiating business. The actual cost and maintenance of doing business online is much lower than when you do the selling physically.   Selling over the internet using an e-commerce portal is more advantageous and money saving than dong business physically. 

Here are some of the advantages of e-commerce when compared to conventional selling:

• You need to have a shop to sell your products in and you have to have someone sit in a shop and sell your stuff.  Rent and manpower are not cheap.

• Checking the number of items or products sold at anytime is time consuming and complicated; in e-commerce, it is made easier by integrated payment gateway.  And not to insult the human race, but computers are more accurate when it comes to dealing with numbers.

• The work force employed in running an online business will be minimal compared to opening a shop

• The customers that visit your site are customers that are willing to buy.  Remember, to find your website, they would have to have searched your product first.  So, that would mean interest on their part

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• The greatest advantage of e-commerce is that you can sell not only to Japanese but also people across the world.

There are many considerations required which includes domain registration, website design, booking hosting space, integrating a payment gateway, uploading contents and images and speed of internet.  Also, one major setback is the language barrier.  To solve this, you can create your two portals, in Japanese and in English to cater to all e-consumers.  These are just some of the aspects of starting up e-commerce in Japan – there may be minor problems, but it looks very promising.