VALUE COMMERCE

Common Ground for “Affiliate Marketing” and “Social Commerce”:
Sustainable Purchasing Cycles

Taku Hasegawa
Director
In charge of Marketing Solutions Business

Changes to Consumer Behavior and Expansion of Social Commerce

Even though the pay-per-performance advertising service “Affiliate Marketing,” which is a major business of our company, has entered a period of maturity, it is still continuing to grow. Amid this situation, in regard to our marketing solutions business, we have been working on three key challenges: (1) expanding high-quality media that matches the context of the purchase information searches of consumers, (2) strengthening social commerce, and (3) tightening quality control based on examining and monitoring advertisement-placement websites.

In particular, looking at the purchasing behavior of consumers, there have been significant changes such that, in addition to conventional behavior via SEO media, there is behavior such as the selecting of products and services on social media. As a result of such trends, our independently-developed influencer profile-page creation service “VLINK” had its number of registered users surpass 10,000 less than one year after it was launched. Furthermore, as the result of receiving business transfers, we have started offering the trial-use promotional campaign & word-of-mouth generation service “monicam” and the influencer matching service “Castbook,” and thanks to the addition of these, it strongly appears that our company currently has momentum in the social commerce market. Something that ValueCommerce has always been good at is “pull advertising,” which involves motivating consumers without selling to them. In information searches by consumers for deciding what to buy, we have been proposing products in a natural format, and have been offering a broad range of choices. In regard to social media as well, thanks to receiving usage from large numbers of advertisers, we have been significantly expanding the potential for distribution expansion, not only for e-commerce websites, but also for brick-and-mortar stores.

In-house Business Collaboration regarding New Service “BUZMA”

Although our business partners have been centered on large corporations thus far, in the case of sole proprietors and small businesses, characteristics include primarily using social media. In light of this, in order to enable us to handle business scenarios at a variety of sizes, in March 2025, we made the company that operates the subscription-based influencer matching service “BUZMA” into a subsidiary, and started offering this service.

“BUZMA” was originally started as a service for travel-related media, and it has been targeting eating & drinking establishments, accommodation facilities, and so on. In regard to this point, this service has a high level of compatibility with our company’s travel technology business, so we anticipate that there will be synergies based on mutual collaboration. Through a matrix-type deployment across different businesses, we shall further expand our room for growth in the market.

Realizing Sustainable Purchasing Cycles

The social commerce market is still in a developmental stage. Although our company has taken preemptive actions in anticipation of changes to such markets, we will need to continue to take on further challenges in order to create purchasing environments that are even more convenient.

Whether it be for “Affiliate Marketing” or for “social commerce,” what our company is aiming to do is to promote the best possible matching between advertisers and media operators, and to provide information that is valuable to consumers.

In order to achieve this, it will be essential for us to accurately understand not only advertisement delivery, but also user insights, and to deeply understand the context that led to purchasing. Advertisers transmit the optimal information to the targets of their company’s products, and then through media operators, they support the purchase decision-making of consumers. As a result of this, sales are achieved, and marketing effects are optimized. Based on keeping this cycle going, we shall realize ecosystems that are sustainable for all: the advertisers, the media operators, and the consumers.