No. 37 Marketing Revolution Resulting from the Government of Japans Basic Resident Registration Law Amendment [Part 1] (November 30, 2006)

Impact of Basic Resident Registration Law Amendment (Japan)

The amended Basic Resident Registration Law (Japan), which limits access to the Basic Resident Register, took effect on November 1, 2006. This means that the Basic Resident Registers of local governments, which until now were in principle open to the public, are now no longer accessible by the public.

Prior to this change, companies could access four types of information by looking at Basic Resident Registers: address, name, date of birth, and gender. This enabled companies to use direct marketing to target a very specific audience.

Put simply, this revision to the law will have a major impact on businesses in Japan that are dependent on direct mail, such as those listed below:

• Schools (including private preschools, junior high schools, high schools, universities)
• Preparatory schools
• Driving schools
• Specialty clothing stores (e.g. kimonos)
• Real estate companies
• Cosmetic companies

For these businesses information such as region, age, and gender is key. However, they will no longer be able to acquire new push・customers through direct mail. Instead, they will have no choice but to explore new marketing techniques.

This situation has brought about a great deal of interest in the Internet. More than a few companies started changing the way they do business as much as a year ago, to contend with this change.

*Reference information
Basic Resident Registration (Japan): This is an official record which publicly certifies citizen addresses and other information. Information such as name, address, date of birth, and gender is open to access to anyone requesting it. According to a survey conducted by the Japanese governments Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, local governments nationwide received approximately 1.5 million requests for access to these records in FY04. Excluding public agencies, 70% of the requests were for direct mail or other business activities, 11% for market surveys, and 8% for public opinion surveys.

Consider the following when using the Internet

When considering the use of the Internet to acquire customers, a major point will be meeting the obvious needs of your target users.

If the user has an obvious need: User acquisition through pull・sales strategies

Lets say your user has a specific obvious need, such as a product they need to buy soon for an upcoming special event. It's likely that they will use your website in their information-gathering process. Its important, therefore, that you get your website ready to serve that purpose. This is what is referred to as pull・style sales.

In addition to setting up your site to correspond to user needs and scenarios, it is also a good idea to look into buying search engine advertising and keyword advertising so that your site will be sure to appear in search results when users perform searches using related keywords.

To ensure that your companys site is gets noticed on the Internet, it is especially important to find out which keywords users will use when searching for products and then include those keywords in your website. If the keyword is your companys name or your products name it is very likely that users will find your site. However, for companies that relied on direct mail, gaining recognition with a limited target audience used to be enough, and it is therefore likely that those companies do not have very high overall name recognition.

For example, if a user wants to buy a childrens kimono, they will likely search for one of the following keywords:

• General product name (e.g. childrens clothing, kimono)
• Know-how about the product (e.g. how to choose a childrens kimono)
• Names of competitors with name recognition

This is the moment at which you will need to employ some mechanism to get them to recognize your company.

For instance, you could look into creating content related to these keywords on your site, linking to related sites, and in some cases even establishing your own new, related site. In any case, you are attempting to target potential customers via search engines, so it is essential that you get your site displayed at the top of the search results.

If you decide to add related content to your site or establish a site to provide know-how, be aware that playing up your own products or services too much can backfire and turn off your users.

Lets say a user visits your site with the expectation of "learning how to choose a childrens kimono・(from an impartial perspective), but all of the products that stand out are from one particular company. That user will quickly figure out that the site is there as a promotional gimmick, and go away with a bad impression of your company. If you are going to provide know-how from a third-party perspective, you should not focus only on the advantages of your own companys products, but also consider how best to live up to your users expectations by, for example, also clearly stating the disadvantages or other points of view that may exist.

Acting in a way that is in line with user needs, as described above, will give you the chance to win on the web even if your company or product is not well-known.

In the next column (Part 2), we will discuss what actions your company can take when your target user does not have any obvious needs.