Open inside Japan’s largest e-commerce platform “Rakuten Ichiba”, the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” is an online shopping mall gathering sustainable products, notably products with internationally recognized certifications such as MSC (sustainable fishery), FSC (sustainable forest management) or Fairtrade. A significant focus is also placed on education, with in-depth articles that detail the stories behind the products on offer.

The slogan of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” is “shopping that changes the future” and has for objective to make sustainable production and consumption practices the norm. Even if a few organizations and projects already existed in Japan for the promotion of such practices, when consumers were asking about how to take action, and more precisely where to find sustainable products, a concrete answer was missing. The “Earth Mall with Rakuten” gathers in one place products and information about lifestyles contributing to the realization of sustainable society.
By addressing the Sustainable Development Goal 12, the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” actually addresses different goals, notably related to natural resources and working conditions. For example, the promotion of FSC-certified products is connected to the target 15.2 and the purchase of Fairtrade-certified products to the several targets of goal 8.
The particularity of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” is its place within Rakuten Ichiba, an online marketplace gathering over 46,000 merchants. Even if the primary goal is to pick up and highlight sustainable products among the over 250 million items currently sold on Ichiba, by creating a new demand, the objective is also in turn to foster an interest among merchants for more sustainable practices and ethical marketing. This initiative has thus an impact on both the demand and the offer sides.
The first challenge for opening a mall of sustainable products was defining “sustainable”. A definition too strict would have resulted in a very narrow selection of products and given users the impression than being a responsible consumer was an impossible thing. On the contrary, a definition too loose would result in the promotion of products with questionable impacts and in a lack of reliability of the information provided overall.

The main beneficiaries are the general consumers who can learn more about sustainability and purchase related products. Since the products are sold by merchants, they also play an important role. To establish the criteria for products to be presented inside the “Earth Mall with Rakuten”, the editorial team, made of Rakuten and Hakuhodo employees, regularly consult external experts to validate their decisions, notably Dr Norichika Kanie, who leads the xSDGs laboratory of Keio University. The support messages from the different stakeholders – merchants, international certification organizations… - can be consulted on the website.

In 2017, Rakuten established its materiality, that is to say surveyed its stakeholders and upper management, to identify concerns that Rakuten had a responsibility to address in its sustainability action plan. Among these concerns, sustainable consumption was identified as a high priority, and the idea of creating an online mall of sustainable products was then investigated. During the investigation phase, the team of Hakuhodo which had also been working on a similar concept under the name “Earth Mall” was met. At that time, the “Earth Mall” project was used for educational purposes, notably in schools to introduce four certifications (MSC, ASC FSC and RSPO), but without concrete shopping opportunity provided. The two teams rapidly agreed to work on the online version of the “Earth Mall” and the pre-launch of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” was done in April 2018, under the shape of a simple webpage introducing the four certifications and the different related products available inside Rakuten Ichiba. A few interview articles were also written to present certified products, as well as products outside the scope of certification schemes but still contributing to the realization of a sustainable society, such as products reducing food waste.
In view of improving the content and to provide users a real online shopping mall with different item categories and also a rich selection of articles, the project team spent a few months clarifying the definition of “sustainable product”, considering the integration of other certifications as well as sustainable products outside the scope of international certifications. On the other hand, Rakuten Ichiba merchants were engaged to share information about the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” and recruit new initiatives and products to present. Finally, sustainability experts were contacted to validate the orientation choices made or to be the object of an article where they could present their own selection of sustainable products from Rakuten Ichiba.
In November 2018, the full version of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” was officially launched.
Several indicators are selected to monitor the performances of the initiative. Being an online shopping mall, the sales generated are of course a key aspect, but in the early stage of the project, awareness is also an important aspect and the number of visitors and pages visited – notably for each article – are particularly tracked. As the users making purchases in the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” have a Rakuten membership, demographic data can be collected and the population more inclined to sustainable shopping defined. Finally, the number of certified products available is also checked as a way to gauge the initiative effect on the merchants and on their sustainable product offer.

The impacts of the initiative show through all the monitoring indicators mentioned above, mainly the awareness of sustainable consumption practices measured by the number of webpage views, and the interest for sustainable products measured by the sales generated through the “Earth Mall with Rakuten”. The general interest for the project was also observed during the press conference to announce the official in November, with over a dozen of articles covering the event.
Although the initial purpose was to highlight existing merchants of Rakuten Ichiba for their sustainable initiatives, merchants who are not yet selling their products on the platform are now considering opening an online store on Rakuten Ichiba to have the opportunity to be part of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” community. In a similar way, it is expected that consumers with no Rakuten membership may create one to be able to shop online for sustainable products.
Leaving no one behind for the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” has been considered at several levels. First, when establishing the criteria for products to be considered as sustainable, relying on international certifications only would have excluded all merchants that are too small to afford such certifications that come with a cost, or whose products fall outside the scope of certification schemes, for examples merchants engaging in direct trade with emerging economies rather than through predefined fair trade programs, or merchants with products related to food loss reduction.
Leaving no consumer behind is also taken into account in the editorial decisions of the project team. When writing articles about sustainability - about the SDGs or international certifications - the content has a tendency to get technical and to potentially interest a narrow audience of people already familiar with those concepts. To create a shopping experience that changes the future and really engages consumers at large, articles are written with different reader profiles in mind, and covering sustainability through a variety of angles: sustainability and fashion, food or sports – products sustainable and low-cost, convenient or delicious.

The first factor that made the initiative possible is the collaboration of the different teams inside Rakuten, notably of the team in charge of sustainability promotion and the team in charge of new business development related to e-commerce. This created the conditions for first the integration of the SDG 12 in Rakuten’s sustainability action plan and then its implementation in Rakuten’s core business. The initiative is thus more than an awareness campaign or a philanthropic activity but is considered as a profitable business opportunity.
Secondly, the promotion of sustainable production and consumption on a B2B2C platform makes the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” particularly impactful and innovative. Even if a growing number of companies of the retail industry integrate sustainability practices into their supply chain management, because Rakuten connects over 46,000 merchants with over 95 million members in Japan, the promotion of sustainable production and consumption on Rakuten Ichiba can potentially have an impact not only on the demand side at a large scale but also on the offer side over 46,000 supply chains. This includes many SMEs which usually have a lower awareness of what the SDGs are and of the business opportunities they represent.
Because merchants are customers of the service Rakuten Ichiba, communication must be handled with care. Improving practices for better production and consumption habits also means pointing at practices that do not contribute to the realization of sustainable society: unfair working conditions, depletion of natural resources, pollution… Illegal products are of course already forbidden on Rakuten Ichiba, and for example the sale of wildlife products restricted in addition to relevant laws. But the regulations of the marketplace do not cover as of today all issues listed in the SDG targets and their modification in that sense will take time. Meanwhile, communicating with consumers on products that could be considered as unsustainable would not be acceptable from the point of view of the merchants.
The approach chosen with the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” to overcome these constraints was to of course mention the issues related to today’s production and consumption practices, but to also always focus on the innovators and the solutions that already exist to change those practices. By adopting a positive attitude and communicating with consumers on simple actions that can be taken in their everyday life, the initiative is true to Rakuten’s optimistic corporate culture and aims to convince merchants of the merits of sustainable consumption rather than constraint and forbid.

Besides the human resources, the main costs associated with the project are related to the writing of articles. The benefits of the articles are the sales of the products showcased they translate into.
Rakuten benefits from the project in other ways. The “Earth Mall with Rakuten” represents an opportunity for the company to show one more time its commitment to contributing to the SDGs and to having a significant impact on consumption habits. The project coverage by the media may also contribute to improving the image of the company and as a consequence, to gaining new costumers and business partners. Merchants who were not selling products on Rakuten Ichiba have actually already expressed their will to do so to be able to be part of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten”.
Rakuten is a global company providing over 70 services in 30 countries and regions. In countries where e-commerce platform services similar to Rakuten Ichiba are provided, such as France or Germany, the concept of the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” could potentially launched in an identical way. Sustainable lifestyle practices could also be presented through different services. For instance, Rakuten Travel is an online travel agencies listing over 33,000 accommodations in Japan. An initiative similar to the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” would introduce hoteliers with sustainable practices and share information about sustainable tourism.

Changing consumption habits and mainstreaming sustainable production and consumption practices by 2030 is a challenge, especially in Japan. Although it has an important role to play in key issues related to the SDGs – seafood consumption or plastic usage to name a few -, the awareness level of Japanese consumers on those concerns and on the existing solutions like eco-labels, is still quite low compared to European countries or the United States. Consumers’ weak demand for sustainable products reflects on the supply side: at the time of its launch in November 2018, the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” was gathering about 7,000 products, a very small percentage of the 250 million items available on Rakuten Ichiba.
But as previous studies have revealed on the one hand that the Japanese people, and especially the younger generations, was compared to other countries quite pessimistic regarding critical social and environmental issues such as climate change, they have shown on the other hand that clear information provided on problems as well as on solutions may influence their consumer behavior.
Because the “Earth Mall with Rakuten” holds a specific place on a major B2B2C online marketplace and adopts an optimistic attitude towards sustainability, educating both suppliers and consumers on what actions can already be taken, its success towards reaching the Global Goal 12 will grow as the sizes of its sustainable product offer and of its consumer community increase, until sustainable production and consumption become the norm.

Earth Mall with Rakuten URL: https://event.rakuten.co.jp/earthmall/

Related articles:
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/innovation/rnn/2019/0117/
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/innovation/rakuten_today/2019/0205-2685/