Abstract
The Japanese match industry is an early case of an industry that changed global market dynamics by building international competitiveness through combining low-cost and low-price strategies with product differentiation. This differentiation was achieved through the registration of trademarks for all matches exported, total quality control, and strong investments in graphic design to adapt brands and their imagery to different host markets and cultures. This study shows how trademark data provides alternative and complementary angles on particular economic phenomena—in this case, on how industries and countries build global competitiveness despite being technologically less developed.
Highlights
The Japanese match industry is an early case of an industry that changed global market dynamics by building international competitiveness through combining low-cost and low-price strategies with product differentiation
The early development of the global match industry, between the 1860s and 1930s, is considered to have been dominated by the Swedish Match Co., by Ivan Kreuger and the dominant position he created for his business in many world markets at the beginning
A special thanks goes to Laura Linard and Christine Rigley at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School, and to the Japan Match Industrial Association
Summary
Trademarks as “Global Merchants of Skill”: The Dynamics of the Japanese Match Industry, 1860s–1930s. Moving forward in the value chain, stakeholders in the match industry were essentially exporters and foreign and domestic merchants.[36] Only a few large manufacturers were vertically integrated, with their own stock warehouses and trademark printing facilities and machinery.[37] A large number of merchants supplying matches to foreign markets were Chinese and Indian expatriate entrepreneurs who had settled in the Hyogo Prefecture (Kobe) and, until the 1920s, in the Osaka Prefecture They played an especially important role in the development of the industry and its international competitiveness. By the end of 1927 the Swedish Match Co. controlled over 73 percent of Japan’s match exports worldwide and 81 percent of sales in the Japanese market.[49] Despite eliminating domestic competition, these mergers and acquisitions in Japan introduced new and more advanced machinery, which increased mass production and the ability of Japanese firms to obtain economies of scale and scope. Various events such as the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and the AsiaPacific War beginning in 1941 further aggravated the international trade of Japanese markets, eventually leading the Japanese government to take control of the production and distribution systems in place in the match industry.[52]
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