From left: Ryohei Takahashi, Kazuto Uemura, Yuichi Miyamoto
Ryohei Takahashi, Chief Researcher at Mercari’s Circular Economy Research Institute: Today, we launched Mercari’s Circular Economy Research Institute. First, can you talk about what this research institute is and why it was established?
Yuichi Miyamoto, PR Director for Mercari Group: Back when Mercari’s only service was the marketplace app, we established something called “Mercari Labs” with the support of university professors. The goal of Mercari Labs was to address the concern of secondary distribution competing with the primary distribution market by carrying out research and sharing objective data to show the positive contribution secondary distribution has on the primary distribution market.
Following that, we launched the Recommerce Institute to boost the visibility of and invigorate the recommerce market as we were considering launching a new C2B (consumer-to-business) commerce business. At the same time, Mercari began offering an increasing number of services and features important to promoting a circular economy, such as Merpay and Mercari Hallo. We decided that we should update these research institutes that originally focused only on our marketplace business to go beyond Mercari and cover a broader scope that would reach a wider variety of stakeholders.
This is why we chose to establish the Circular Economy Research Institute.
Going forward, we will work with stakeholders such as business operators, the government, and researchers to share information about how to reduce waste and create a more sustainable world.
Kazuto Uemura, Editor-in-Chief and Chief Researcher of Mercari’s Circular Economy Research Institute: I was actually on childcare leave until January of this year, and this was the first project I was involved in after returning to work. I was asked to make this not just another outreach medium, but something that would really resonate with stakeholders. From there, we began considering the requirements, like the concept and name.
When we celebrated our 10th anniversary, we announced a new Mercari Group mission: “Circulate all forms of value to unleash the potential in all people.” In order to achieve that mission, we need the knowledge of many different stakeholders, including researchers, brands, media, and the government.
Similarly, in order to lead the move toward a circular economy, we need to go beyond general awareness-raising activities and implement more specific initiatives that show that we’re serious about this move.
Kazuto Uemura
Miyamoto: In planning the Circular Economy Research Institute, we wanted to create what we needed to achieve our critical deliverables from scratch, rather than rehashing what we’ve done before.
Mercari has considered collaborative work with many different stakeholders in the past, and of course, not all of those projects made it past the conceptual stages. But all of the initiatives we considered were very significant, and we felt that in order to reduce waste and create a more sustainable world, we needed to take the time to build up this knowledge and share it with the world. That’s an undertaking that requires more than just the media outreach that the PR Team is already doing.
Mercari engages in various PR activities, but there are some topics that are difficult to turn into articles, even though we want to convey them to the public. Through this new research institute, I’m hoping we can share with external stakeholders the kind of information that isn’t covered by our existing media like Mercan and Merpoli.
Uemura: Last year, I was in charge of a proof of concept promoting reuse in collaboration with Yakult Sanyo and local governments in Hiroshima. In 2024, I worked on building partnerships across industries through our Green Friday project. With these experiences in mind, I started to wonder if we could create a kind of framework that would make it easier to collaborate with stakeholders as we work to reduce waste.
Takahashi: You called this a framework, and Yuichi talked about it as a tool to build relationships. What was the intention behind making it more than just a medium for outreach?
Uemura: I talked about this with Ryohei over lunch once before. In terms of achieving our mission and overcoming barriers to business growth, when we boiled it down to the basics, we concluded that the key is figuring out how to continuously implement initiatives like Green Friday throughout the year, which is not something that can be done by our product or marketing teams alone.
If we had a foundation that offered an easier way for various players involved in creating a circular economy to collaborate across industries, we might be able to evolve our initiatives into something even bigger, like business partnerships. They don’t have to directly involve Mercari, either; I’m hoping that this could lead to organic collaboration between other stakeholders as well.
The Circular Economy Research Institute is both a medium for research and a node for collaboration with our partners. I believe that this will make it an important asset.
Miyamoto: I believe the direction we've taken not only fulfills our original objectives, but has become something even better. The team in charge of the Circular Economy Research Institute is part of the PR Team, so by nature of our work, we found ourselves thinking about it as a medium for outreach. But in the early stages of the project, when we discussed whether we should set KPIs like page views, we decided not to, because building relationships is more important.
Take the interview with Prof. Yamamoto of Keio University’s Faculty of Business and Commerce, for example. Rather than just sharing existing content that has already taken shape, I believe there’s value in looking at topics in the initial discussion stages, thinking about how to approach them, and sharing thoughts to guide future actions. This has the potential to play a significant role.
Yuichi Miyamoto
Takahashi: Earlier, Kazuto mentioned that the two of us talked over lunch. There, we also talked about how Mercari has grown as a company, but we need to be careful not to lose what made Mercari unique in the old days. Back then, Mercari created new value not just with our marketplace, but through innovative mechanisms for things like workstyle and outreach, enabling all employees to contribute no matter their team. As a company, we obviously conduct business, but rather than just focusing on business with the goal of increasing profit, it’s important for Mercari to create new value and new perspectives at the same time.
The term “research institute” may bring to mind a think tank, but our research isn’t purely academic, nor is it purely for the sake of the business. Creating new value is very Mercari-like, and I think that establishing a mechanism like this to do so is also uniquely Mercari.
Miyamoto: Earlier, we called this a framework. I think that a big part of this is that the Circular Economy Research Institute enables us to increase the connected population working on Mercari’s initiatives and the initiatives to drive a circular economy. The circular economy concept still isn’t as well known in Japan as it is elsewhere, so we hope to visualize the stakeholders involved.
Taking actions like this that aren’t directly related to our business but aim to make society a better place is something that Mercari has been doing since the company was first established. We believe that contributing to the circular economy as a whole will also bring benefits to us someday. I think that belief is what makes Mercari unique.
Uemura: When I talked to Ryohei about the topics we wanted to cover during initial discussions about the Circular Economy Research Institute initiative, he was very supportive and urged me to continue on that track. I think that the willingness of people at Mercari to go beyond their job description to support projects that they think are interesting and meaningful is also very representative of the company culture, and it gave me a lot of confidence to keep going.
Takahashi: It’s very Mercari, and I think that’s represented by visualizing new ways of working, conducting business, changing society, and innovating to an external audience. We aren’t a so-called think tank that’s actually just made up of researchers publishing academic papers, nor are we doing this just to market our own business by manipulating the public opinion. We want to use our services to create added value to make the industry and even society a better place. I hope that this research institute can become a way for us to share that with the world.
Ryohei Takahashi
Takahashi: Yuichi, you mentioned that you wanted to make the research institute a node for collaboration. In that sense, the more different kinds of people that can be involved, the better, right? Do you have any examples of types of people you hope to see become involved and utilize this research institute?
Miyamoto: I believe that the research institute is a node for people to collaborate with Mercari as a company, and also a medium for Mercari employees to embody Mercari’s workstyle.
Anyone can get involved, no matter their team or role. For example, someone working on business development for the Mercari marketplace may decide not to go ahead with a partnership in their area of work because the business impact would be small. But this research institute could encourage them to start collaborating with the business partner anyway from the perspective of how it can contribute to society, regardless of business viability. We can also share stories of how using Mercari helps our users gain a new perspective toward physical items by fostering the joy of seeing items they no longer need treasured by someone else. That’s what I’d like to see come out of the Circular Economy Research Institute.
Uemura: In terms of increasing the connected population within the company, we’re beginning collaboration with Mercari’s research and development organization R4D, and we hope to take on our shared challenge of internal communication to increase awareness among employees. We’re aiming to work together to increase the number of people who can resonate with our goal, starting close to us and working our way out.
Takahashi: I think Mercan was pretty innovative with its concept of presenting internal newsletters to an external audience. It communicates things like HR topics, projects, and culture. Having members of different teams come together to work on one project is a very Mercari-like way of working. If we can develop the research institute into a platform that involves external stakeholders to accelerate this way of working, I feel like we would see even more interesting new value.
Uemura: We’re already seeing more and more connections being made, with researchers we’re working with introducing us to more researchers in other fields. I think that this could be one type of new value that the Circular Economy Research Institute creates.
Miyamoto: We received an overwhelmingly positive response when Kazuto explained this project to research professors, and the idea of it acting as a node for collaboration really resonated with many of them. In that sense, I hope that continuing this kind of outreach fosters interest in working with Mercari going forward.
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Yuichi Miyamoto
Yuichi is PR Director for Mercari Group. After graduating university, he joined Monex, Inc. At Monex, Inc., he was in charge of customer support, then moved to the marketing department where he was responsible for marketing for various financial instruments. He then became involved in branding for the securities business, overseeing company-wide cross-functional projects, and formulating and executing business strategies in the Corporate Planning Department and Public Relations Office. Yuichi joined Merpay, Inc. in January 2019 as the PR lead for the new Merpay mobile payment service, heading Merpay conference planning and operation. Then, Yuichi led PR for the entire Fintech business, including cryptoassets. Currently, Yuichi is the head of PR for all of Mercari Group, which involves both corporate PR and service PR (Japan Region PR).
Kazuto Uemura
Kazuto is Editor-in-Chief and Chief Researcher of Mercari’s Circular Economy Research Institute. He joined Mercari in January 2016. After launching the customer service team for a new service, managing a recruitment/talent development team, and launching a community team, and more, he now works on the PR Team, where he has led projects such as Mercari Workshops, regional circulation models, and Green Friday.
Ryohei Takahashi
Ryohei is Public Policy Advisor in Mercari’s Management Strategy Office, Editor-in-Chief of Merpoli, and Chief Researcher of Mercari’s Circular Economy Research Institute. He also currently serves as the Chairperson of the Supporting Association for Student Council Activity Japan. After holding positions such as specially appointed associate professor at Chuo University, a department head for Matsudo City, DX promotion advisor for the prefecture of Kanagawa, advisor to the city of Chiba, visiting researcher at Meiji University, researcher at the Tokyo Foundation, researcher at Public Policy Planning & Consulting Co., Ichikawa City council member, and chairperson of the Meeting of Young Council Members of Japan, he joined Mercari in June 2018. Ryohei has been selected as one of the “Top 100 People Rebuilding Japan” by Aera magazine and has authored books such as What Is an Intergenerational Gap? (PHP Shinsho), A Textbook for 20-Year-Olds (Nikkei Premium Shinsho), An 18-Year-Old Out to Change Politics! (GendaiJinbun-Sha), and A Textbook for a New Student Council (Junposha Co.,Ltd.).
