When a Niche Market is Put in a Rich, Massive Market, It is No Longer a Niche

It is hard to imagine something that is as uncommonly sought after among the stylish trendy 20-somethings walking around a (relatively) balmy winter afternoon in one of Tokyo's major shopping areas.  Yet, the Reptile Expo in the 4th floor of a shopping mall in Ikebukuro attracted enough traffic to warrant a 40-min wait for ticket purchase.  Inside the exhibition hall that took up a whole floor, a slew of booths peddled everything from hamsters in the range of ten USD to snakes that can cost more than 10,000 USD.  Gerbils, owls, chameleons, hedgehogs, turtles, among other unusual pet choices, fought for attention of attendees.

And without too overcrowded, the Expo was happening enough to ensure no booth was left unoccupied by at least half a dozen people going ooh-ahh at the animals and animal upkeep supplies on display.  There are plenty of people who probably shelled out some 12 USD for the entrance ticket just to see all the unusual animals in numbers that the local zoo would see no incentive to display at once.  But there are definitely plenty of other attendees who are dropping some serious cash to take home a few new pets in their cages and plastic tupperwares.

The spendthrifty behaviors of some attendees are quite surprising given the price of the offerings.  To be honest, most of the animals at the booths are not budget friendly, and certainly not so for the very ordinary looking white-collar workers and their families who seemed to have made up the bulk of the attendee population.  Yet, looking at the cages on display, many of them had the "Sold" pink sticker already affixed, suggesting that the booths are doing a brisk business.  With animals worth hundreds and even thousands of dollars flying off the shelves, the rental costs of the booths look to be recuperable.

The consumerism on display here in rather unusual (and as biased as it sounds, not immediately useful) products says much about the power of scale in doing business on any product.  People who are interested in having unusual pets (i.e. not dogs, cats, or rabbits) may be of quite a small population, even among the Japanese populace that has a tradition of keeping unusual hobbies.  But in a city of 38 million people, even a tiny percentage of the overall population can turn out to be a massive number in absolute terms.  Given the average spending power of the Tokyoite, the niche market can be of quite some potential revenue.

And that principle is precisely how Japanese shopping portals like Rakuten make money on hundreds of thousands of "odd" goods on sale.  Everything from traditional armor and stylish rocks have a market because are collectors of all such products.  Their numbers may be less than a tenth or a hundredth of the overall Japanese population, but their persistence in keeping up their hobbies, and willingness to invest more and more money into perfecting their hobbies, ensure small niche markets to both exist and flourish.  The economy is all the better for it as it diversifies into manufacturing of many more different products.

What is seen at the Reptile Expo is no different from sales of rocks and armor on Rakuten.  Certainly, there is no denying that many will find the transactions of live animals to be immoral, inhumane, and downright appalling.  But there is also no denying that their procurement, maintenance, and sales generate a robust kind of economy rarely found in many countries without similar recreational interests and purchasing power.  The fact that many Japanese people are willing to spend their hard-earned cash on unusual animals, among other products that are not life's immediate necessities, help boost consumption that bodes well for the economy.

Of course, to suggest that all countries encourage the purchasing of live animals is both ludicrous and unrealistic.  Wildlife conservation requires responsible breeding and humane upkeep, concepts that people of many nations do not have the experience or the institutions to enforce.  And it is all the better that many countries simply do not have the culture of trying new hobbies, even n something as innocuous as foreign food.  The comparatively supercharged transactions of unusual hobbies, and the corresponding economic benefits, would and should be left to a few selected countries like Japan.

Yet, at the same time, it would not hurt to create awareness in more places among more people about the joys of certain unusual hobbies to be make them at least more usual in perception, if not personal participation.  The average hamster is not going to set back a person a significant portion of his or her income but can act as a good introduction to the world of animal self-education.  Gradually the person would become more keen to spend more to make sure the hamster (or other animals) to be more comfortable.  The long-term economic benefits of such activities are substantial, however tiny and insignificant it looks on a per capita level.  

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