Masashi Ueda

(Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan)

 

 

Abstract: The competitive model of e-book is a little bit different from other contents business like movie, television, music, etc. Partially it depends on cultural policy of each countries but it is affected by bargaining power among publishers and distributors. In Japan and some European countries the assortment of e-book is limited and distributor cannot expand its sales. In this paper I’d like to show the structure of Japanese book and e-book market based on a report on e-book published by Competition Policy Research Center, Japan Fair Trade Commission. Based on its interview survey most of Japanese publishers intend to expand its sales in digital section but afraid of the decrease in sales of books. So they request to make a Japanese style whole sales model contract with e-book sellers. It includes suggested retail prices, rates, and negotiation rules of price change. This structure sounds like resource based view but is changing after market entry of Amazon and Apple. Though old member control the assortments and release timing of e-book limited competition was started. In addition I’d like to discuss to make a comparison between music distribution and e-book distribution in Japan based upon its report. In Japan market size of music and book industries are shrinking while game industry is increasing continually. They are straggling to adopt new style of business model in online distribution while the last one made a dramatically change of itself to survive these circumstances. In this study I’d like show comparison of these three industries in Japan.

 

 

Key words: e-book; music distribution; online game; competition model; bargaining power

 

JEL codes: L16, L13, L14