| Summary: | 日本是世界上屈指可數的長壽國，面對快速老化、少子化與人口減少的國家。日本政府為解決急速高齡化趨勢下所衍生之老人長期照護問題而推動居家照護的政策。
結果日本的老人公寓產業急速成長，但有些企業成功，有些企業失敗。
下列是本研究的目的：
瞭解現代日本老人公寓企業的商業模式如何創造高齡者的價值。
分析產業環境因素如何影響企業的經營。
企業的資源如何建立它的競爭優勢。 === The aging of Japan outweighs all other nations, as the country is purported to have the highest proportion of elderly citizens resulting from increase of life expectancy due to improvements in medicines and nutrition coinciding with rapid population growth after the World War II. The growing share of elderly people coinciding with changes of family structure and function, people’s lifestyle, fertility rate, and economic as well as sociocultural factors have resulted in a sharp decrease of the traditional three generation households in the last few decades. Nation’s rapid declines in mortality and fertility result in increasing public expenditure for public social welfare while decreasing tax revenue paid by working population. As a result, Japanese social welfare system needs to be restructured, and some social welfare programs need to be outsourced to external business entities to correspond to the nation’s super aging society.
In the past, Japanese institutional long-term care facilities largely served for either low-income class people or upper-income class people, and majority number of middle-income class elderly citizens had stayed at home and received family’s living supports. However, large number of today’s and future Japanese middle-income class elderly people are required to live on their own as a result of complex sociocultural factors, such as decrease number of family care taker and changing attitude toward taking care of older parents. Besides, elderly abuse problem, forced healthcare treatments, socially abandoned elderly, and fraud and dispute by elderly care service providers have been major social problems in long-term care service business industry.
In order to solve the stated problems, Japanese government restructured law and regulation standard for elderly housing business served mainly for middle-income class aged-citizens in 2011. In order to seize a great investment opportunity and public subsidies to operate business, numerous business entities from numerous types of industry have entered into the elderly housing industry.
In a short period of time since new system started, some companies gained success, while others faced problems and left the industry. This study analyzes the industry’s problems and characteristics as well as four case companies from the perspectives of business management theory. In this study, industry analysis model is based on Michael Porter’s five forces model, and case companies are analyzed using Alex Osterwalder’s business canvas model as well as Michael Porter’s SWOT analysis.
Based on the study, it is found that delivering right values to target customer groups and building key partnerships with local businesses are especially important factors to make company’s business model more effective for today’s Japanese elderly housing business. Unlike institutional care services provided for socially vulnerable groups in the past, the customer groups of elderly housing are middle-income class and have different demands toward residential services. Moreover, threat of new entrants of this industry becomes higher and industry competition is expected to be growing continuously. Besides, developing unique living support services and preventive care services can be major revenue streams of business as well as a strong competitive advantage over others. Therefore, developing services from customer’s perspective and making a long-lasting relationship become more important to operate residential service business for the elderly in today’s changing Japanese elderly customer’s demands and industry environment.
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