Fumiya's blog

So this is going to be my second post, and this time, as a Japanese blogger, I would like to share bit of Japanese culture….

In general, we tend to put ourself in a closed community and our culture is group oriented rather than exerting their individuality. Expressing strong personal opinions is not very common as in Western cultures. In addition, we are known as “hard workers” ( I don’t think it applies to all of us – but anyways) especially in the business section.

If a new product were to be introduced to the Japanese society, the product has to contain characteristics that fits into the culture  (a social factor that influences customer’s decision making. – Chapter 5)

Samsong and Softbank came up with a new 3D phone called Samsung 930SC mainly targeting the market in Japan. From a third person’s point of view, this phone looks quite similar to Iphone; Similar applications, MP3 players and touch screen. Below is the photo of Samsung 930.

Features that fit to Japanese cultures

1. One Seg TV channels – One seg allows users to watch TV through WiFi with good quality display. In Japan, most of the workers and even students use public transport (mainly subway) to commute to work or school. While in users are in subway, this phone offers entertainment to all the users.
2. Believe it or not, we love taking pictures. This phone contains 5.1 MB pixel camera with 2GB memory capacity.
3. It has variety of emoji ( Japanese style emoticons). In Japan, almost everyone uses emoticons in order to express our feelings or to make sure that there is no miscommunications involved. Below are pictures of some common emoticons used in Japan.

Samsung and Softbank company successfully increased the revenue by adding a new value to a 3G phone that is appealing to Japanese consumers.

This is officially my first blog that I have created, and because it is my first one, I wanted to share something that I feel passionate about: Football (Even though I currently study in Canada, we should still use an appropriate word for “soccer”)….. and of course Facebook. (However, let me be clear that I am not a facebook addict)

Facebook, as you know was created in February 2004 to broaden your social network. However, due to large amount of access from all over the world, it has undergone huge changes. To be precise, being able to make blogs, able to access from 3G phone such as Iphone, Blackberry and even advertise a good… You may not realize how large facebook has become over few years since 2004… Here is a little interesting trivia about Facebook.

• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
• Became more globally accessible; More than 70 translations available on the site.
• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

Nike recently have started using Facebook to advertise Nike football goods by uploading inspirational video using famous players such as Steven Gerrard and Lionel Messi (my favorite). Here is the link to Nike Football on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/nikefootball?v=app_2392950137#!/nikefootball?v=wal

I have also selected my favorite ads from Nike.

By 2010 May, it was stated by Nike that the fans on Facebook has DOUBLED after releasing the latest football Nike ads and have estimated that it will have huge positive impacts on the sale. Here is the statistical display of # of fans on facebook

As you can see, after the latest release of the NIKE ads, they successfully increased the number of viewers and recognition which will impact the sale.

FACEBOOK; what a website it became.