Q.After a trip, do people re-order the local products they loved online?
Published 2026-06-18
Answer
Yes — a fair number of travelers do re-order a regional product online after getting home. But there is almost no nationwide public data that directly measures whether *domestic* travelers buy again online after visiting a place. The closest figure comes from a survey of inbound visitors: 58.2% of those who liked a souvenir kept buying it after returning home, and 24.4% of them did so via cross-border EC or mail order (MAFF, 2019).
Almost no data directly measures the trip-to-online-purchase link
As far as we could find, no public open dataset directly asks Japanese travelers whether they bought a region's products online after visiting it, at a nationwide scale. Tourism statistics measure who came and how often; EC statistics measure what sold and how much. But the question that joins them — did the trip lead to a later online purchase? — falls into an institutional blank spot. So the only option is to combine nearby indicators and read between the lines.
The closest figure: 58.2% of inbound visitors keep buying after going home
This is about inbound foreign visitors rather than domestic travelers, but the MAFF-commissioned "FY2018 Souvenir Market Behavior Survey" (conducted by Mitsubishi UFJ Research & Consulting, published March 2019) is the closest hard number we have. Surveying 2,400 people across seven countries, 58.2% of those who felt a Japanese food souvenir was "worth buying" kept purchasing it after returning home. Of those, 24.4% named cross-border EC or mail order from Japan as their channel — rising to 35.6% for Chinese respondents. Note the scope is limited to inbound visitors and food products.
58.2%inbound visitors who kept buying a liked souvenir after returning home
24.4%of repeat buyers, used cross-border EC / mail order
35.6%China — the highest cross-border EC rate
Domestic research on this is very thin
On the domestic side, the research of Professor Noriko Tsujimoto (Momoyama Gakuin University) is just about the only work that directly examines how a travel experience leads to later EC purchases. Her surveys of Chinese visitors (conducted 2017–2018) found that over 60% had re-bought a Japanese food souvenir they came to like via cross-border EC ("often" 21.5% + "have done so" 43.3%). But again, this is Chinese visitors, food only, and roughly nine years old — it can't be generalized to Japanese travelers as a whole.
60%+Chinese visitors who re-bought a favorite food souvenir online
21.5%answered they do so often
43.3%answered they have done so
Reading nearby indicators: furusato tax, related population, mail-order market
With no direct data, the only path is to connect nearby indicators — and several surveys show that a connection to a region spills over into later purchases and visits. Among furusato-tax donors, 10.4% say they now "consciously choose the donated town's products in everyday shopping," and 9.4% "visited the town in person after donating" (RIETI, 2023). Japan's "related population" — people with an ongoing tie to a region — is estimated at about 22.63 million (MLIT, 2025), and the food mail-order market, which includes regional products, has passed ¥5 trillion (Yano Research, 2025). None of these is strictly "trip-triggered," but together they show fertile ground for a regional connection to turn into later spending.
| Indicator | Figure | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|
| Furusato tax: now consciously choose the town's products when shopping | 10.4% | RIETI (2023) |
| Furusato tax: visited the town in person after donating | 9.4% | RIETI (2023) |
| People estimated as 'related population' (age 18+) | approx. 22.63M | MLIT (2025) |
| Japan's food mail-order market size | ¥5.01tn | Yano Research (2025) |
The data gap could be an opportunity for Nara
Nara is full of "I want to taste that again" specialties — kakinoha-zushi, Miwa somen, Yoshino kuzu, Yamato tea. Yet no data, in Nara or nationwide, shows how much people who travel to Nara go on to buy its products online afterwards. Visitor counts and spending are tracked by the JTA and the prefecture, but what comes next — the post-trip online purchase — is a field no one measures. Flip that around, and it's an opening: a town or business that studies it would find clues for turning a one-off visit into recurring sales. Start with the datasets below to check where Nara's tourism spending stands today.