THE Pacific : Lady Kenmore Goes to Tokyo : Changing consumer tastes and Japanese discounters’ efforts to hold down prices are helping to spur sales of foreign appliances.

Japanese homes, with their hopelessly cramped quarters, have never been a likely place for big Western-made household appliances. A standard U.S. or European-size washing machine, for example, would fill up the entire bathroom in an average Tokyo apartment.

But changing consumer preferences, coupled with a budding rebellion by Japan’s large-scale discount retailers against the strict retail price maintenance rules imposed by the powerful domestic manufacturers such as Toshiba and Hitachi, are helping foreign makers of household electrical goods increase sales in Japan’s demanding consumer market.

Imports of electric household appliances, including items such as refrigerators and washing machines, have surged recently, increasing more than tenfold in a little over three years from $11.3 million in January, 1986, to $125.2 million in June, 1989. Between January and May of this year, 2,500 refrigerators made in the United States and 1,400 made in Europe were shipped to Japan; unimpressive numbers perhaps, but they did represent increases of 163% for the United States and 125% for Europe from the year-ago period.

The trend is likely to be accelerated by the unexpected moves by some of the country’s biggest discount chain stores to put Western imports on sale for the first time in their history.

Venture With Sears

In April, Sato Musen, a large discount chain store, turned an entire floor of its store in Akihabara, Tokyo’s mecca of discount consumer electrical goods, into a display area for imports.

Dai-Ichi Katei Denki, another home appliance retail chain with 196 stores throughout Japan, surprised the industry a few months ago by announcing a joint venture with Sears, Roebuck & Co. to import Sears’ own brand of large refrigerators. Since June, the refrigerators have been on display at Dai-Ichi’s Akihabara store--the first foreign products to be sold there (apart from a few electric shavers) in the company’s 30 years in business.

Foreign brands of household appliances have been a rarity in Japan partly because their prices have been uncompetitive, but mainly because of the stranglehold that the big domestic manufacturers have on the distribution systems. Each has its own network of shops around the country that sell only their brands.

And, until recently, they have all managed to keep the big independent discount shops in Akihabara and other similar areas happy by allowing them to offer fairly generous discounts. Meanwhile, importers of household appliances had to content themselves with selling through catalogues kept at department stores and in import specialty shops.

In the past year, however, the domestic manufacturers, seeking to improve their profit margins, have been demanding that the discount retailers raise their prices. The retailers have balked, pointing out that in the wake of the revaluation of the yen, the prices of Japanese goods are already too high. And to prove their point, they have begun importing foreign products. “It has been an indirect form of retaliation,” admitted one retailer.

Even before their clash with the domestic makers, the discount store operators had a creeping fear that unless they offered something more than low prices and local products, they could gradually lose their grip on Japan’s increasingly affluent and adventurous consumers.

Seeks Upscale Clientele

There are more wealthy Japanese who can afford to buy imports and who have started looking for more upscale goods rather than just low-priced goods.

“We want to attract more up-market customers to our store,” says Hiroshi Sato, director of Sato Musen, who is proud that his store is the only one that has dedicated so much precious space to imports.

In addition, the life style of urban consumers is changing rapidly. People who have lived abroad have grown accustomed to doing one huge load of laundry instead of the three loads that they are obliged to do in the typically small Japanese washing machines.

Bigger washing machines, refrigerators and dishwashers are naturally attractive to the increasing number of women who have to do all their food shopping and housework on the weekend, some because they work during the week.

Apart from this change in consumer preferences, a cut in prices made possible by the stronger yen and the abolition of commodity taxes on luxury goods last April have made imported home appliances all the more attractive. “The price difference between domestic and imported products is shrinking to the extent that there really isn’t much difference,” claimed an official at Yamagiwa, one of the main retailers of electrical goods.

Yet despite their growing acceptance in Japan, foreign makers of household appliances will be hard put to win a larger share of the market. “We don’t expect an explosion of demand for foreign products,” says Yoshitaka Nishida, a public relations officer at Dai-Ichi Katei Denki.

Sensitivity an Issue

For one thing, the foreign makers are not exactly bending over backward to try to adapt to the Japanese market. “Just like the car makers, they think Japanese consumers should adapt their ways to the goods,” complained one manager at a large retail store that has just started selling foreign products.

Foreign manufacturers have paid little attention to the specific needs of Japanese consumers. “Domestic makers are more sensitive to consumers needs,” says Nishida. For example, Japanese homemakers like to keep their raw fish separate from their meat and are fussy about over-chilling the vegetables. Japanese manufacturers accept these preferences and make refrigerators with several compartments.

In any event, the majority of Japanese homes are still far too small for foreign products and retailers report that more than a few over-optimistic buyers have had to give up their new American refrigerator because there just was no way it would go through the kitchen door.