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Japanese Bookselling Industry

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Submitted By mmaa300
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(Japanese book selling industry)

Why is the profitability of large Japanese retail booksellers relatively poor and their scale relatively small?
In such case, we can say that there are many reasons that results in the relatively poor profitability of large Japanese retail booksellers and their small scale, and I am going to discuss them in Six factors as mentioned below:
Firstly, Resale Price Maintenance which defined by (the Saihan system), is one of the key reasons that no significant industry consolidation has occurred is the unique price-fixing system that makes it illegal for larger and potentially more efficient booksellers to use price competition to drive out small competitors, which would be a normal competitive strategy to increase sales in a market that sells undifferentiated products, like books. Also, profitability can be even lower if bookstores choose to do announcement or promotion campaigns. Japanese readers like to purchase books based on attractive advertisements and good reviews from the previous readers.
Secondly, competition in the area of book distribution is very low, as the book retailers sometimes buy their books from wholesalers and usually directly from publishers, which cause low profitability in the booksellers retail.
Thirdly, the emerging substitutes, like used books, e-books and rental books, have reshaped the customers’ reading behavior. Over 80 million dollars in book sales were sold online in Japan a 50% rise since 2004 to 2005. Hence, it is comprehensible why the profitability of Japanese retail booksellers is relatively low.
Fourthly, many Japanese customers still not trust the transactions by credit card and they fears of identity theft. They still largely a '' cash society'' , this mentality has understandably hampered e-commerce in Japan which decries the profitability in the booksellers retail.
Fifthly, generally

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