Two years ago, Rakuten<\/b> bought the US-based Buy.com<\/b> for $250 million. On January 31, Buy.com will redirect to Rakuten Shopping at Rakuten.com, completing the transition to Rakuten’s marketplace-style business model that started shortly after the purchase.<\/p>\n
In Japan, Rakuten leveraged their many merchant partners to increase sales by highlighting the people behind the products. By more directly presenting their collection of third-party virtual stores to US shoppers, the metrics-driven Rakuten will find out fast if this decentralized method of e-commerce can compete with the more traditional models used by\u00a0Amazon<\/strong> and their ilk. We’ve discussed Rakuten’s “shopping mall” style of e-commerce<\/a> here, including an interview with COO\/CMO Bernard Luthi<\/a> and a recent review of Rakuten’s 2013 e-commerce predictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n