Google launched its price comparison service intended to Japanese market today, that collects product description and price updates from an enormous number of e-commerce retailers and allows you to find the cheapest price at a glance.
Google’s new service launch influenced the stock price of Japan’s largest e-commerce price comparison site Kakaku.com[J], it dropped slightly down to 380,000 yen which is lower by 55,000 yen compared to yesterday’s closing price and equal to that recorded in December 2007.
The following chart shows you the daily movement of Kakaku.com’s stock price during the last three months.
(Source: MSN MoneyCentral)
Japanese stock market considers Google Shopping might be a threat for Kakaku.com. However, is the new service so influential as to press down Kakaku’s stock price? The followings may be considered as threats for Kakaku.com.
- Unlike Kakaku.com, Google Shopping allows e-commerce sites to update their price listing for free.
- When a consumer makes a search on Google to buy something, Google Shopping search results will be answered prior to other sites’ results, which may cause the decreased induction to Kakaku.com.
However, Google Shopping lacks the following features (in comparison with Kakaku.com)
- No ranking of retailers dealing with the product you’ve specified.
- No specification nor details about the product you’ve specified.
- No other user’s comment/review on the product you’ve specified.
- No category menu
The Japanese love ranking things. Without it, they can’t make their minds on which product should be purchased from which e-commerce site.
But Google Shopping gives you benefit if you’ve already decided what you would buy. Because…
- Some of retailers listed on Google Shopping are not participating Kakaku.com. There’s some cases that Google Shopping show you a list of lower prices than Kakaku.com
- Google Shopping collects price quotes only from e-commerce sites. No quote of real store’s sticker prices is included in the results, which makes you easier to pick the cheapest one only from the options that you can buy online.
How Google Shopping will affect the Japanese e-commerce industry?
Via: Tech Seven[J]
Masaru IKEDA
Not really. so far no sign of many people moving to Google Shopping is observed. Remember, Google is far behind Yahoo! here. Not all Google’s sub services are guaranteed its success in Japan by its being under the brand of Google. But it is also possible for them to be one of the most popular services like Google Maps.