Localizing Western Products

Posted on June 17, 2007 by Adam R.

Living in Japan you come across strange versions of your favorite western food and a huge range of western products that have gone through localization for the Japanese market. I get a laugh every time I go to the supermarket and see some bizarre product with a corny catch phrase on the packaging.

Today I was totally bamboozled at the latest product launch on the Japanese market from a western company. Pepsi has launch a new variation of Pepsi. Thing is, it is cucumber flavored and if I was an investor I would be asking questions at the next Pepsi board meeting. I would think green tea flavor would sell better than cucumber in Japan as even though Cucumber is nice in Japanese salad, I can’t see a growing demand for this product.

On the other hand the Mega Mac at McDonald’s was pure genius although I'll never understand why it was tested first on the Japanese market. Mega Mac would sell millions in the United States or Australia. My friends could not believe me when I sent them a picture of the four-meat patty Mega Mac burger.

On the clothing front anyone who has spent time in Japan has seen some weird t-shirts with gibberish in English on them. The leftovers of what might have been cool clothing in the eighties seems to have been shipped to rural Japan and sold at high prices due only to the fact that they have English on them. My local department stores are full of it and there are some very out of date labels on sale.

If I had my way, one thing that would be localized is a lot of vegetables and fruit as potatoes are all golf ball sized and pi-man aka capsicum seem to be the bonsai version.

Back in Australia potatoes are huge and so are the capsicum, another import would be watermelons as Japanese prices are crazy to me. Not just importing produce but also making the horticulture available to farmers in Japan would be a good idea.