Towards the appropriate human-centred information systems: A case study of the Japanese retail industry

Abstract

The industries of Japan have developed by learning from Western industries, especially the USA, and by implementing many of their concepts and technologies. However, Japanese industries have often implemented these concepts and technologies in a very different way from the USA. For example, while the USA uses information systems in retail industries as a tool by which data are collected and analysed to ‘control the market’, in Japan this same technology is considered rather as a learning device to ‘interpret the market’. While in the USA the market is seen as a natural phenomenon capable of being controlled, the Japanese see it as an ambiguous phenomenon that is ever changing and is not capable of being controlled. Rather it is important to feel the change in the market itself.

This paper introduces human centredness to the information system, and argues against modern rationalism, i.e. human versus technology, taking the case of use of POS data from the POS system (point of sale: a system that collects data on both the customer and goods sold by scanning bar codes that are attached to the surface of the goods) by the eminent Japanese retailer, Ito-Yokado. It emphasises an interactive concept of interaction between human and technology of the postmodern paradigm.