Women Who Fill the Institutional Voids: Why has the Yakult Lady Method Succeeded in Emerging Markets?

This chapter investigates why Yakult’s specific marketing method, the “Yakult Lady method”, has been effective to enter emerging markets. Yakult, a Japanese beverage maker, developed a unique marketing method using local women in Japan in the 20th century. Now, it has become Yakult’s key success factor in its overseas businesses, especially in emerging markets. It has also been considered a good way of doing business in emerging countries because it contributes to sustainable economic development. However, scholars know little about why it has succeeded in emerging markets from a business competitiveness perspective. Based on an exploratory case analysis of four of Yakult’s overseas businesses, we find that the Yakult Lady method has performed well in emerging markets because it filled the institutional voids with its own resources — the well-trained Yakult Ladies. By organizing local women, Yakult develops a system that serves as a distribution network, information channel, rich pool of skilled labor and mechanism for money collection. Such findings present a different approach from previous studies for winning in emerging markets.