Yasunobu Ito

An Analysis of the Service Ecosystem of the Japanese Pay-Television Industry from the Perspective of Service Dominant Logic

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances surrounding pay-TV industry in Japan. According to SDL (Service Dominant Logic) theory, the paper considers the industry as a service ecosystem that is a self-adjusting system of components connected by service exchange. The study analyzes and illustrates the ecosystem using information from audience measurements by TV viewing meter and survey, media marketing research, economic statistics, observation of marketing activities and interviews with businesspersons in the industry. This paper argues that it is meaningful to consider the situations surrounding the pay-tv industry as a service ecosystem that consists of various components such as platforms, cables, satellites, channels, productions, TV sets, set top boxes, and family viewers. This consideration has to lead to a better understanding of the situation where each component is mutually nested. The paper concludes that although competitive video on demand services on the web are expanding gradually, the coverage rate of pay-tv remains stable in the Japanese market. The pay-tv ecosystem embraces strength to survive in the market for the moment due to attributes of audience and its prevention system against churn.

Diversity of reactions among local people upon commercialization of traditional knowledge under intellectual property rights systems

The purpose of this study is to focus on the diversity of reactions among local people caused by the commercialization of traditional knowledge under intellectual property rights systems. While intellectual property rights systems tend to be globally unified, as in the negotiations regarding TTP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), local people having traditional knowledge react to and cope with such systems diversely; some reject such systems while others positively adopt such systems. This study specifically focuses on local peoples diverse reactions and responses to the existing intellectual property rights systems. The cases from Hawaii illustrate that there are a variety of potential relationships between intellectual property rights systems and traditional knowledge. The analyses contained in this paper also show that, in cases where traditional knowledge is commercializing through intellectual property rights systems, it is advantageous for an enterprise as a rights holder to attempt to pursue a dialogue with local people, rather than simply pursue a patent right secretly in order to claim exclusive control over intellectual property rights. Through such a dialogue, risks for business development may be reduced and the values of cultural resources may be enhanced.

‘Ethnography’ in Japanese Corporate Activities: A Meta-anthropological Observation on the Relationship Between Anthropology and the Outside

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the consumption and usage of ethnography, the chief methodology of social/cultural anthropology, in Japanese industry. Nowadays, ethnography is not exclusive to anthropology. As an investigative method, it has been gaining popularity in industry such as engineering, design, marketing and so forth. I argue that depending on the phase and context, ethnography can be a commercialised research tool or an authoritative source for advertising. My focus will be on the ways in which ethnography, the mainstay of anthropology, is redefined and valued in the business context. Ethnography as a ‘new’ technique – not new, per se, but relatively new for business people – is regarded as a most promising technique which approaches/uncovers hidden needs and leads to new products and services which excite customers/users. At the same time, some idiosyncrasies of Japanese firm will be shed light on and will be examined with the relation to the usage of ethnography. Moreover, the implicit theme of this chapter is the anthropological inquiry of a changing discipline (i.e. anthropology) from a historical perspective, with attention to the way in which Japanese anthropology could cope with these trends in industry.