Marketing in Japan Made Simple : The big secret: Design products that the Japanese want to buy

All last week, the news was full of the same dreary drumbeat: how tough it is to crack the Japanese market. From the hat-in-hand approach of the U.S. auto makers, it began to look as if Japan’s trade policy was only part of the problem; because Japanese consumers snatch up European cars, it almost began to seem as if they specifically reject U.S. products.

Not so. The Big Three auto manufacturers’ approach of making products and then trying to force consumers to want them is an example of how not to cultivate a foreign market, or even a domestic one. There are better ways to tackle the challenge of a new market, and Apple Computer, for one, is offering a fascinating object lesson in how to do it.

Apple arrived on the Japanese scene in the late 1970s, and, by the admission of its chairman, John A. Sculley, “was very unsuccessful in early attempts.” As he said in a Friday broadcast of NBC’s “Today” show, Apple “tried to treat the Japanese market as . . . an extension of the European or American market, without any sensitivity to the uniqueness of its culture or product requirements.”

Prime example: space. It is at a premium in Japan. “We found out that they wanted products which were very small . . . they wanted products which were much easier to use than the ones which were available from Japanese manufacturers,” Sculley said.

The basic supply-and-demand lesson Apple learned? “You can’t go over there with a cookbook of things that have worked somewhere else in the world. You’ve got to go over and take the time to understand the Japanese market,” Sculley said. The Japanese are not reluctant to buy American products, he added. “The Japanese are reluctant to buy products which aren’t appealing to them.”

That’s not brilliant, it’s basic good business sense. And it has worked for Apple, which increased its business in Japan 40-fold in the last four years.

And innovation can’t stop once a company cracks open a market. Sculley announced Thursday that the California-based Apple will soon produce new consumer electronics products that could eventually lead a charge of American firms into markets now dominated by the Japanese.

While U.S. firms have continued to do well in computers, the consumer electronics market, including VCRs and television sets, is dominated by Japanese companies.

The new products, advertised as easy to use, will include portable devices that will give the user the ability to manipulate text, images and sound. As the personal computer market slows, Apple, IBM, Tandy and others are wisely looking for new ways to use their technologies.

That’s what smart business does--looks ahead. When more U.S. companies do that, there will be no need to go hat-in-hand to the Japanese. Then, they will come to us.