Case Study Trailer

Park24: Reinventing the Short-stay Parking Industry in Japan

Author(s): KIM, W. Chan, MAUBORGNE, Renée, KAWAKAMI, Tomoko, JI, Mi


The case reviews how the Japanese company Park24 reinvented the short-stay parking industry in Japan and expanded it over the years, establishing itself as the unchallenged market leader. Hitherto short-stay parking in Japan was largely provided as a public service. Shortage of land and the high price of real estate explained the severe shortage of city parking space was due to land scarcity and lofty prices of land resources. Park24 saw that the solution was not building gigantic multi-storey car parks but making parking lots available everywhere people went and accessible anytime of the day. Drawing insights from the convenience store industry, Park24 looked for small plots near popular destinations and launched a low-cost, secure and automated parking service called Times. Rolled out rapidly across Japan, it fundamentally redrew the landscape of the short-stay parking industry. Park24’s blue ocean move shows how a nondisruptive market-creating approach can open up new value-cost frontiers, new demand and high growth.

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Blue ocean pedagogical materials, used in over 2,800 universities and in almost every country in the world, go beyond the standard case-based method. Our multimedia cases and interactive exercises are designed to help you build a deeper​ understanding of key blue ocean strategy concepts, developed by world-renowned professors Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Materials available from Harvard Business Publishing
Blue Ocean Shift | Strategy materials available from The Case Centre