Emerging competitive value in use with materiality: Competitive transformation of business system about online securities market in Japan

This study examines transformation of business system in the Japanese securities industry and the initial stage of new markets created by aggressive individual investors. With the launch of deregulation in 1997, Japan' s financial industry is still in a transitional stage to a full-fledged phase. Coupled with the rapid development of the internet, emerging online securities firms have been rapidly growing and are now competitive with traditional securities firms. This trend has already been seen in the United States and many other countries. However, different developments are taking place in the Japanese financial industry. Japanese online securities market has attained the largest amount of trades worldwide, and the number of individual investors, which showed almost no presence at one time, has grown. Traditional securities firms that run over-the-counter services have also started to demonstrate their unique operations, which are noticeably different from those of American firms. As we examine this situation, these striking differences should be attributed to competitive strategies based on business systems representative of each country, not to the factor derived from macroeconomic policy, i.e. deregulation. In order to gain a solid understanding of these industrial innovations, this paper examines the concept of competitive value in use, which is a subject of much debate among Japanese marketing studies. We will both examine the concept and expand upon it.