Orders Nearly Triple on JFOODO Special Amazon Site Compared to the Previous Year -Mega-influencers, producer stories, and expanded product lineup deliver results-

Apr 07, 2021

The Japan Food Product Overseas Promotion Center (JFOODO) has launched an online promotion targeting American millennials^*1 to grow Japanese green tea exports (from April 2020 to March 2021). With the concept of Japanese green tea as the "mindfulness beverage," mega-influencers are directing followers to the JFOODO Japanese green tea promotion site. Content that expresses producers’ feelings about growing Japanese green tea is also being shared, and the product lineup is expanding on JFOODO’s special site on Amazon. With these various initiatives, the promotion is spurring purchase intent among the target audience, leading to nearly triple the number of orders at JFOODO’s special Amazon site compared to the previous year.

We worked with Marie Kondo (also known as KonMari), a tidying expert, and actress Nikki Reed, the Twilight Saga star, who appeared in a Japanese green tea promotional video that we produced. It is shown through Instagram and digital ads. They also posted the video on their personal accounts. Afterward, it immediately received 330,000 views and the total cumulative views are above 420,000. As a result, recognition of the concept that Japanese green tea is a "mindfulness beverage" doubled compared to the previous year, and many people in the target audience were guided to the JFOODO promotion site for Japanese green tea.

JFOODO has launched a promotion site as a place that visitors can enjoy even if they are not very knowledgeable about Japanese green tea or mindfulness. The site shares a variety of content, including journals (written as blog posts on a variety of topics) updated monthly, basic knowledge about Japanese green tea, brand movies, and promotional videos. The site has increased visitors' interest while boosting purchase intent for Japanese green tea. The journals in particular are tailored to the traits of the target audience, who express deep interest in products' back stories. While informing readers about traditional methods of producing Japanese green tea, as well as stories about producers that tell of tea farmers and merchants who are very particular about tea products, the journals have pushed the image of Japanese green tea as a beverage that brings about mindfulness because it contains a large amount of theanine^*2. The result: purchase intent among people aware of Japanese green tea reached 96%, the number of visitors directed to Amazon’s JFOODO special site doubled compared to the previous year, and orders nearly tripled.

JFOODO’s special site on Amazon, which has been in operation since 2017, now offers more than 100 products. Because the JFOODO Japanese green tea promotion site directs customers to this special Amazon site, it has been used as a sales route within the U.S.
Moreover, as a new initiative in FY2020, an e-commerce site featuring listings for 26 products was set up on Shopify^*3 in an attempt to expand export opportunities for businesses that could not ship goods to the US, due in part to the complex procedures involved.

JFOODO’s special site on Amazon

*1. Millennials: The generation born between 1981 and 1996
(age 24 to 39 in the year 2020).
*2. Theanine: Suppresses the stimulant effect of caffeine on the central nervous system and relaxes it. Among Japanese green teas, gyokuro, matcha, and kabusecha are rich in theanine because they are covered during cultivation to block sunlight and prevent the theanine in the tea leaves from changing to catechin, which has a stimulating and exciting effect.
*3. Shopify: Founded in 2004. Expanded to Japan in 2017. A cloud-based e-commerce platform that handles multichannel selling. Using the company's system allows anyone to easily launch an e-commerce site. Over a million online shops in 175 countries use Shopify (as of October 2020).