Rakuten Inc. is one the largest E-commerce site in Japan and they have recently announced their plans to acquire Buy.com for $250 million -in cash.

Buy.com is a US based shopping portal which went public in 2000, but after facing a major crash in the stock market its founder Scott Blum had to make it private the next year. Rakuten on the other hand is the largest internet shopping mall in Japan and offers more than 50 billion products through 33,000 merchants.

With the vision of expanding their global presence Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten's founder and chief executive stated that " We feel it has a great strategic fit with our global expansion. Our goal is to become the number one e-commerce company and Internet company in the world".

Perhaps they had exhausted their domestic market and hence plan to spread their wings through one of the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Before hitting the US market, Rakuten has already struck partnership deals with China, Thailand and Korea.

Hiroshi Mikitani plans to introduce Rakuten's Japanese method of combining shopping with entertainment and encouraging interaction between merchants and sellers. Sellers will be able to choose their shop design, do their own marketing campaign and directly stay in touch with their customers.

"If we convert it into what we do here in Japan, then it is going to be a lot more powerful" he said; he further added that " We believe that we have a very different business model from Amazon and eBay. We empower the merchants". Buy.com's official acquisition will take place in June.

Mr. Mikitani, one of the richest person in Japan seems to be very determined and aggressive about his expansion plans in US, but I hope that he realizes that dominating the US market will not a piece of cake, 'coz I am sure that the giants like Amazon, eBay and Walmart will be waiting for them with 'their' strategies ready.