1st Edition

Marketing and Consumption in Modern Japan

By Kazuo Usui Copyright 2014
    232 Pages 55 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    276 Pages 55 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book explores the development in Japan throughout the twentieth century of marketing and consumerism. It shows how Japan had a long established indigenous traditional approach to marketing, separate from Western approaches to marketing, and discusses how the Japanese approach to marketing was applied in the form of new marketing activities, which, responding to changing patterns of consumption, contributed considerably to Japan's economic success. The book concludes with a discussion of how Japanese approach to marketing is likely to develop at a time when globalisation and international marketing are having an increasing impact in Japan.

    Introduction  Part 1: Marketing and Consumption from c.1905 to 1937  Historical Settings  1. ‘Reeks of Butter and Milk’? Marketing of Western-style Sweets through the Keiretsu Retail Network  2. ‘Miss Shiseido’: Marketing an Image with the Help of Keiretsu  3. Lighting as Enlightenment: Consumer Life with Modern Western Technologies  4. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go to Mitsukoshi’: The Department Store, a Dream or a Threat of Modernity?  Part 2: Marketing and Consumption, High Economic Growth to the Present  Historical Settings  5. ‘Discount is My Philosophy’: Consumption of Everyday Necessities from Super  6. ‘Sacred Treasures’ for Every Home: Keiretsu vs. Independent Retailers of Electrical Products  7. Convenience Stores: Born in America and Revised in Japan  Summing up

    Biography

    Kazuo Usui is a Professor at Saitama University, Faculty of Economics, Japan, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, Business School, UK.

    "Professor Kazuo Usui has produced an original and insightful study of retail evolution and consumption in Japan. The use of a variety of sources to explain the changing distribution structures is an impressive template for studies of the retail and consumer history in other societies." John Dawson, University of Edinburgh Business School