(Yicai Global) March 27 -- Japanese retailers’ participation in China’s online sales channels is particularly lacking, the deputy director of the Japan External Trade Organization’s Shanghai office told Yicai Global.

When trying to enter the live sales sector in China, Japanese retailers face challenges in terms of the different languages, different business models and the difference in how Chinese consumers spend online and in brick-and-mortar shops, Hiroshi Takayama said at a recent business-to-business trade fair of Japanese liquors in Shanghai.

It is hard for Japanese firms to keep up with the constantly changing e-commerce landscape in China, Takayama said. Chinese e-marketplaces keep coming up with new sales formats, such as livestreaming, which shoppers enjoy and which increases their engagements with vendors.

Chinese consumers are fickle and like to try out new sites, so Japanese firms need to be able to quickly familiarize themselves with new platforms and to constantly adjust their strategies to keep up with changing tastes, Takayama said. Japanese and Chinese consumers also use different social networking platforms.

Takayama said that despite these challenges, he hoped that an increasing number of Japanese firms would become more active in online sales in China and closely follow consumer trends. China’s e-commerce sector is very well developed, he added.

On top of their brick-and-mortar stores in the big first-tier cities, Japanese firms are also starting to target Chinese cities with a large number of big spenders, such as emerging first-tier cities and smaller second-tier cities by building relationships with large shopping malls and supermarkets, Takayama said.

All the Japanese firms that took part in a survey last year believe that China’s livestreaming economy will grow, but that it is difficult for them to conduct business in China through live sales, according to the poll conducted by Japanese media.

Fifty-six percent of the companies said, “they were very interested in and were thinking about it,” when asked if they would adopt the livestreaming model in China, while 24 percent said that “such plans are now in progress.”

Editors: Shi Yi, Kim Taylor