Japan has some of the best convenience stores in the world. Stores like 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson, called コンビニ (konbini), have become tourist attractions onto themselves thanks to the high quality, local food offered there. For the average Japanese citizen, konbini are a staple of everyday life, namely for — as the name implies — their convenience.
What makes Japan’s approximately 56,000 convenience stores so much better than the US’s 152,000? Much of the konbini’s success has to do with Japanese product design and a pleasant in-store customer experience. Product design is just one half of the CX that makes the konbini so unique. The other half is placemaking, which I argue is indeed a part of user experience, and most definitely is an integral part of customer experience.
Onigiri
