Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Globalization and national diversity: e-commerce diffusion and impacts across nations
- 2 The United States: adaptive integration versus the Silicon Valley model
- 3 France: an alternative path to Internet-based e-commerce
- 4 Germany: a “fast follower” of e-commerce technologies and practices
- 5 Japan: local innovation and diversity in e-commerce
- 6 China: overcoming institutional barriers to e-commerce
- 7 Taiwan: diffusion and impacts of the Internet and e-commerce in a hybrid economy
- 8 Brazil: e-commerce shaped by local forces
- 9 Mexico: global engagement driving e-commerce adoption and impacts
- 10 Global convergence and local divergence in e-commerce: cross-country analyses
- APPENDICES
- Index
5 - Japan: local innovation and diversity in e-commerce
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Globalization and national diversity: e-commerce diffusion and impacts across nations
- 2 The United States: adaptive integration versus the Silicon Valley model
- 3 France: an alternative path to Internet-based e-commerce
- 4 Germany: a “fast follower” of e-commerce technologies and practices
- 5 Japan: local innovation and diversity in e-commerce
- 6 China: overcoming institutional barriers to e-commerce
- 7 Taiwan: diffusion and impacts of the Internet and e-commerce in a hybrid economy
- 8 Brazil: e-commerce shaped by local forces
- 9 Mexico: global engagement driving e-commerce adoption and impacts
- 10 Global convergence and local divergence in e-commerce: cross-country analyses
- APPENDICES
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Japan is characterized by a unique industrial landscape, including interlocking networks of firms (keiretsu), a highly interwoven political economy (iron triangle), and a distinctive business culture. The combination of these factors leads to a somewhat insular business environment, as indicated by globalization measures uniformly below the global average of firms in the GEC database. Despite the importance of globalization to innovation, Japan is comparable with other economies along the various e-commerce usage measures contained in the global sample. However, Japan lags far behind in achieving some of the key benefits associated with Internet adoption, such as increased sales and reduced procurement costs. Japan thus illustrates the salience of local factors in the adaptation of new technologies such as e-commerce within national environments. In contrast to the notion of the Internet and e-commerce driving a borderless global economy, Japan illustrates that characteristics of the national economy may be reinforced by the use of the Internet and e-commerce, and not be muted by the global melting pot.
Japanese firms have made great strides in adopting a wide variety of e-commerce technologies. Together with adaptation of proven models such as the Silicon Valley model in Tokyo's Bit Valley, ecommerce emerges as an important, though not necessarily transformational, technology enabling operational efficiencies along industry supply chains. However, the level of information systems spending is modest compared with the average firm in the global sample. This has led to the idea that Japanese companies lag in getting online.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Global e-commerceImpacts of National Environment and Policy, pp. 173 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006