Starbucks in Japan

Starbucks picked Japan as an ideal market for its first overseas expansion project owing to the fact that Japan was among the largest coffee importers in the world. With a strategic marketing plan, Starbucks in Japan has managed to become one of the popular coffee chains in the country.

The Asian coffee market has always been complicated due to the region’s millennial love for tea and the traditional rules foreign companies have to follow. From the moment Starbucks opened its doors in Japan in 1996, the Seattle based coffee giant has used strategies that target the Japanese coffee consumers. Despite these restrictions, Starbucks has managed to grow in Japan and now has over 1600 stores with majority of them in Tokyo. In this article, we will look at the distribution of Starbucks in Japan and the potential competitors of the coffee chain.

Starbucks stores in Japan by region

Region	Number of Starbucks stores	Percentage (%) share of total Starbucks in Japan (1630)
Tokyo	317	19.45%
Kanagawa	199	12.21%
Osaka	178	10.92%
Chiba	164	10.06%
Aichi	92	5.64%
Saitama	63	3.87%
Fukuoka	48	2.94%
Hyogo	48	2.94%
Ibaraki	35	2.15%
Hokkaido	35	2.15%
Kyoto	33	2.02%
Shizuoka	30	1.84%
Miyagi	29	1.78%
Tochigi	27	1.66%
Hiroshima	23	1.41%
Okinawa	21	1.29%
Gunma	21	1.29%
Nagano	19	1.17%
Mie	16	0.98%
Shiga	14	0.86%
Gifu	13	0.80%
Okayama	12	0.74%
Niigata	12	0.74%
Aomori	11	0.67%
Nara	11	0.67%
Yamanashi	10	0.61%
Ishikawa	10	0.61%
Ehime	10	0.61%
Kumamoto	10	0.61%
Fukushima	10	0.61%
Saga	9	0.55%
Toyama	9	0.55%
Kagawa	8	0.49%
Akita	8	0.49%
Yamagata	8	0.49%
Iwate	8	0.49%
Nagasaki	8	0.49%
Wakayama	7	0.43%
Oita	7	0.43%
Fukui	6	0.37%
Yamaguchi	6	0.37%
Kagoshima	5	0.31%
Tottori	4	0.25%
Shimane	4	0.25%
Kochi	4	0.25%
Tokushima	4	0.25%
Miyazaki	4	0.25%