The Consideration of Development Comparison and the Proposal of the Evaluation Method in Enterprise Currencies

Abstract

Mileage points and electronic money are called “Enterprise Currencies”. This paper surveys the present market of enterprise currencies in Japan. First, the total annual value of mileage points issued in 2007 amounted to over 680 billion yen, and the value of electronic money used in 2007 amounted to over 580 billion yen. Mileage points are issued primarily for the purposes of customer retention or the acquisition of customer information. Recently Japanese enterprise currencies have been introduced not only in the private sector like airlines, major home electronics retailers, but in the public sector. Japan’s use of enterprise currencies in the civil service sector and educational institutions is wider than other countries. Therefore, this paper aims to compare the market and the development of these currencies. In this paper, not only the scale but the range, alliances and capitalizing are shown. Moreover, the required evaluation method has been shown by Pugh’s Method, which is suitable to express complexity and ambiguity simply, and the typical examples can be applied. Furthermore, those problems and risks which are the issuer’s trust and so on have been shown clear by introducing the evaluation.