When I travel around Australia it amazes me how little Australian farmers know about the Japanese market. There are some good ABC programs that give people a guide as to the best approach to these markets. Its not easy because you really need to live there to understand the culture. You will not understand Japan by talking to or employing Japanese sales consultants. There are just too many uncritical thinkers. What I realised about Japanese marketing is just how non-intellectual it is. Certainly huge resources go into design. What I think is not realised is how much of these resources is wasted by a lack of critical thinking. Even the giants like Sony don't really have good design teams. What they do have is have MANY design teams. Living in Tokyo you come to appreciate how many bad products are designed and produced in order to find one that works for the consumer. Of course more resources go into the good designs and the poor designs are dropped. I sense that Sony cut back on its range of products several years ago, and they seem to have fallen into obscurity since. But they clearly recognised the weakness because they established a JV with Ericson.
The food business is a little different. In Japan, the Japanese have long considered lamb to have a too 'gamey' taste for their pallet. This miraculously changed with the rising incidence of mad cow disease, such that lamb is very popular in Japan now. Why the change? Well simply, when US beef was rejected by Asian buyers, the price of beef went up. Japanese importers recognised that they could make higher margins on lamb than beef, and so they started promoting the 'health benefits' of lamb.
As an Australian I grew up having roast lamb 1-2 times a week. It was only recently however that I learned how to get the best possible taste from lamb. If you buy diced lamb pieces from the butcher and cook it in a steamer you will find it has a much nicer taste. I love steaming because I can cook 'hard vegies' like carrots and potato, then after 3-4 minutes I add the 'soft vegies' like broccoli, carrots and peas along with the lamb pieces. The benefit of using lamb pieces is that you can evenly cook the lamb without the steam drying it out. Its easy because you can simply rotate your meat type and retain the vegetables each night.
The Japanese don't seem to eat lamb at home so much. I think they don't know how to cook it. In my case I got into all sorts of problems trying to teach my Japanese ex-wife how to cook it. I was young then, so I warn you, you don't want to say "I'll show you how to cook lamb the way my mother did". I would never have expected to fight over a desire to do the cooking, or fight over lamb, but food is important to the Japanese. :)
The food business is a little different. In Japan, the Japanese have long considered lamb to have a too 'gamey' taste for their pallet. This miraculously changed with the rising incidence of mad cow disease, such that lamb is very popular in Japan now. Why the change? Well simply, when US beef was rejected by Asian buyers, the price of beef went up. Japanese importers recognised that they could make higher margins on lamb than beef, and so they started promoting the 'health benefits' of lamb.
As an Australian I grew up having roast lamb 1-2 times a week. It was only recently however that I learned how to get the best possible taste from lamb. If you buy diced lamb pieces from the butcher and cook it in a steamer you will find it has a much nicer taste. I love steaming because I can cook 'hard vegies' like carrots and potato, then after 3-4 minutes I add the 'soft vegies' like broccoli, carrots and peas along with the lamb pieces. The benefit of using lamb pieces is that you can evenly cook the lamb without the steam drying it out. Its easy because you can simply rotate your meat type and retain the vegetables each night.
The Japanese don't seem to eat lamb at home so much. I think they don't know how to cook it. In my case I got into all sorts of problems trying to teach my Japanese ex-wife how to cook it. I was young then, so I warn you, you don't want to say "I'll show you how to cook lamb the way my mother did". I would never have expected to fight over a desire to do the cooking, or fight over lamb, but food is important to the Japanese. :)
