Task: Please find the case study on Rakuten from Harvard Business School and answer the following questions.
Q1: Who are Rakuten's customers and how do they pay?
Q2: How does Rakuten provide a unified shopping experience? How do they keep things separate?
Q3: What methods does Rakuten use to make it easy for a small or medium size business to use its shopping platform?
Q4: How has Rakuten extended it services beyond desktop shoppers?
Q5: How should Rakuten evaluate new categories to enter?
Q6: What are methods that Rakuten is using to raise its visibility and brand? Do they make sense?
Q7: Why is the profile of Japanese leading online firms (see Exhibits 2 & 3) so different from the U.S.?
Q8: How do the lessons discussed in the reading by Ellison and Ellison translate into the Japanese setting?