Vol.74 – Case Study: Companies/Brands Leveraging Social Media in Japan (Muji)

Following the previous article Vol.73 – Ranking: Companies/Brands Leveraging Social Media Generating Sales in Japan some of the successful companies and/or brands operating in Japan to generate sales will be introduced, starting with this article.




The first one is Muji.



1. What is the overview of the brand?



Muji is the brand of series of products of a company called Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. that is engaged in business of developing, marketing and selling high quality products of non-brands i.e. not the brands of major manufacturers to consumers who visit their stores under their original brand of “Mujirushi”.



They have been doing this business since 1980 and their products have become quite popular, Mujirushi or Muji has in fact a popular brand in Japan.



2. How Muji has been leveraging social media to drive consumers to their stores?



One good example of how Muji has been leveraging social media is their campaign they did from December 26, 2011 to January 10, 2012 to promote their retort-pouched curries.



1) What was the campaign?



As a part of the campaign, they developed a web content linking with account of Facebook Twitter or Mixi in their web site in which the consumers can enjoy Snakes abd Ladders game. Among web users who enjoyed the game, 10,000 people won the coupon with which they could exchange with Muji’s butter chicken curry, and 9 people won coupon with which they could exchange with 9 types of Muji’s retort-pouched curries and crockery.



In order to successfully drive people to their stores, the rule was that they could exchange with products only if they visited one of the Muji shops. That is to say, they could not exchange with products in Muji online stores (EC site).



2) What was the outcome of the campaign?



28,000 people enjoyed the game, and among 10,000 people who won the coupon, 9,761 visited shops to exchange with Muji product(s).



And because many of them would be uneasy to only exchange their coupons with products, they purchased some products as well.



One interesting outcome was that users of their EC site increased as well. This was probably because the awareness of the Muji’s retort-pouched curries increased among web users and those who could not be bothered to visit Muji offline stores visited their online stores.



As a result, even though there were no discounts, sales of their retort-pouched curries　increase by 80% from the same time of the previous year during the campaign.



3. Is there any other benefit(s) that Muji has been enjoying by leveraging social media?



Yes, there is. It is the fact that Muji now can distinguish which products sells well from others by leveraging social media while not promoting by other media. This made Muji to leverage social media and allocate their resources more effectively and strategically.



1) How has Muji been leveraging social media to distinguish products that sells well from others?



Muji promotes their products leveraging social media without promoting by other media such as e-newsletter, flyer, website, and magazine and TV advertising, and sees how the sales of the products changed.



There was a case in which such social media use led to sales increase by 10% - 300% from previous day.



2) What is an example of such social media use?



One good example is in the case of promoting a pair of gloves with which consumers can use touch panels of iPhones etc. When the products were promoted in the morning of October 14 2011 by Facebook, Twitter and Mixi, the sales on the day increase by 63% from October 13 on average in Muji stores throughout the nation.



The reason why October 14, 2011 was strategically selected as such a promotion was the fact that it was the day when iPhone 4S was launched in Japan. Muji assumed that iPhone 4S launch in Japan would be a hot topic on the day and sales of related products would increase, which turned out to be true.



3) Does such social media use works for all products?



No, it does not. It seems to work only for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods). This is because after data analysis, it became evident that it did not lead to sales increase for products whose price is rather high and frequency of purchase is rather low such as consumer electronics.





In the next article, the author would like to continue introducing case studies of companies and brands that were included in top 20 of the ranking.





References:-

Japan First Company/Brand Ranking that Generates Sales by Leveraging Social Media (in Japanese)

http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/report/20120224/228963/?rt=nocnt



Resources:-

Muji, a original brand of a company called Ryohin Keikaku that develops, markets and sells their high quality products in their stores, has been successfully leveraging social media to drive consumers to their stores by campaigns in which they provided social coupons to selected web users who enjoyed their Snakes and Laders game on their website.  This led to sales increase in their offline and offline stores when consumers could only exchange their coupons with products if they visited offline stores.  Also Muji now can distinguish products that sell well from other by strategically using social media.