Motoko’s weblog

I visited Beijing back in June during the SEMPO Asia Tour, and was amazed – again – by the contrast of modern vs. traditional, Asian vs. Western, and cheap vs. luxury this city had. Just like New York doesn’t really represent the average city in America, and the life in Tokyo can be very much different from the life in Okinawa, I am aware that Beijing certainly isn’t a typical city in China. Although Chinese economy has grown tremendously in the past 10 years, “Made in China” still represents “cheap” in both “inexpensive” and “low quality” products to many of us. And you can certainly go cheap in Beijing by going to shopping malls like Pearl Market and Silk Market. But, most people I saw at these markets were either tourists or older local people. Where do young and successful women go shopping in Beijing?

Beijing is one of the biggest metropolitan cities in the world after all, they do have many high-end Western brand shops such as Louis Vuitton, Nike, Clinique, etc., it’s like walking down the 5th Ave in Manhattan. The crazy thing was that after adding taxes, duties, shipping, etc. etc. the price of most items were at least twice as much as what we’d pay for it in US! China Daily reported that China’s online shopping jumped 128.5% in 2008 to more than US$17 billion. An article Continue Reading »

Many businesses have been enjoying the business relationship with Japan for years both online and offline. Despite the current financial and market crisis, the buying power of consumers in Japan seems to stay strong. The biggest e-commerce sites in Japan, Rakuten had the record sales during the holiday seasons in 2008-2009.

For those who have been considering to tap into Japanese market, but haven’t found data to help make the decision, here are some of the fact about Japanese market: Continue Reading »

I’ve been a member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) since 2003, and been heavily involved in its activities especially in Asia. Back in 2004, we established one of the first regional working groups, SEMPO Japan. Since then, we created SEMPO Asia Committee to support our activities and efforts in Asia, and were able to establish SEMPO India and SEMPO Singapore. While our membership in Asia is still small compared to that in US, I’m fortunate to welcome and work with some of the leaders in these markets through the committee.

Currently, Asia has more than 40% of Internet users in the world. 3 of the top 5 countries on Internet are in Asia (China, Japan and India). SEMPO definitely recognizes that Asia is a very important market, and in order to learn more about the market, the board members are Continue Reading »

SES Paris was a success with increase in attendance and well received sessions. I spoke about the search market in Japan at “Search Around The World” session on the first day. It’s the only session at SES Paris that was in English. (Phew! I took French as the third language at college for a year, but unfortunately, nothing I learned stuck with me.) There were 5 speakers at this session. Each of us was given 5 min to present. The intent was to provide a quick overview of the market from each Continue Reading »