77.8% of E-Commerce Managers Feel Vendor Support Quality Declined After Launch [Self-Conducted Survey]

EC Marketing Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Takashi Nakayama), a web consulting firm with over 15 years of experience supporting corporate marketing, conducted a self-administered survey targeting 199 e-commerce site managers.

View all survey results here

Survey Overview

Respondents: Employed individuals aged 20–60 in Japan who use EC cart systems for work
Valid responses: 199
Survey period: March 26–27, 2026

Conducting organization: EC Marketing Co., Ltd.

Supplementary details on respondent demographics

Gender: 61.8% male, 38.2% female. Age distribution is centered on the 30s and 40s (27.6% and 27.1% respectively), with 15.1% in their 20s. The majority are mid-career professionals, reflecting the real challenges faced by frontline staff directly involved in improvement tasks. Meanwhile, those aged 50 and above account for approximately 30%, indicating that decision-makers and managerial perspectives are also represented to some extent.

Respondent demographics: Age

Respondent demographics: Company size

Executive Summary of the Survey

Comment from the Supervisor

What stood out most in this survey was that e-commerce managers’ dissatisfaction is not focused on 'lack of features,' but rather on 'operational experience in driving improvements.'

While 77.8% felt that 'support quality declined after launch' and 73.7% found the costs high, the underlying issue is not merely price dissatisfaction, but rather the stress of 'wanting to improve but being unable to move forward.'

This survey reveals that the EC cart market is transitioning from an era of feature-based competition to one where operational quality, improvement speed, and communication quality are key competitive factors.

(Takashi Ito, Executive Officer, EC Marketing Co., Ltd.)

Related article

Must-read if you're dissatisfied with your EC cart vendor: 10 checklist items for selecting the right cart

Question: Please tell us the annual sales scale of your EC site.

EC Annual Sales Scale

'Under 100 million JPY' was the most common response at 31.3%, followed by '100 million to under 500 million JPY' at 23.7%, and '500 million JPY and above' totaling 36.3%. The survey includes a broad range of EC businesses, from small to large-scale operations. Notably, 22.7% of respondents operate EC sites with annual sales exceeding 1 billion JPY, suggesting this survey reflects not just the concerns of small EC businesses, but also the operational challenges faced by companies in more advanced stages with higher operational loads and vendor management complexity.

Question: Please select all EC cart systems you have experience using. (Multiple answers allowed)

EC Cart Usage Experience

Many respondents have experience with multiple cart systems, indicating that e-commerce managers are not locked into a single platform and have experience comparing, switching, or operating multiple systems in parallel.

This suggests that as the EC cart market matures and differentiation based solely on features becomes difficult, evaluation criteria are shifting toward 'usability,' 'support quality,' and 'improvement speed.'

Question: Considering EC performance and cost-effectiveness, what are your thoughts on the cost of your EC cart?

Perceived Cost-Effectiveness of EC Carts

The combined responses of 'very high' and 'somewhat high' reached 73.7%, indicating that many e-commerce managers are dissatisfied with costs.

Rather than simple price dissatisfaction, the frustration appears to stem from an imbalance between expectations and outcomes—specifically regarding 'improvement speed,' 'flexibility,' and 'proactive suggestions.'

In particular, the cumulative structure of maintenance fees, modification costs, and operational support fees makes it difficult to perceive the justification for expenses.

Question: Please share any dissatisfaction you have with your EC cart vendor's support. (Multiple answers allowed)

Dissatisfaction with EC Cart Vendors

'Vague responses' (44.4%) ranked highest, indicating strong dissatisfaction not just with response speed, but with 'lack of decision-making information' and 'insufficient accountability.'

Additionally, 'unclear cost estimation basis' and 'few improvement suggestions' scored highly, revealing that e-commerce managers expect vendors to act not just as service providers, but as 'improvement partners.'

Beyond support quality, vendor competitiveness will increasingly depend on business understanding, proposal capability, and transparency.

Question: If you were to reconsider your EC cart, what makes it difficult to switch?

Challenges in Changing EC Carts

The top response was 'fear of cost inflation' (55.6%), highlighting the high switching costs associated with EC carts as a major barrier.

Furthermore, factors such as 'burden of rebuilding customizations,' 'impact on business workflows,' and 'risk of sales decline' create a tightly interconnected system of technology, operations, and revenue, leaving many companies stuck in a 'dissatisfied but unable to act' situation.

This is not a general SaaS issue, but rather stems from the EC-specific phenomenon of 'business infrastructure integration.'

Question: During initial setup, support was strong, but did you feel that support quality declined after launch?

Decline in Vendor Support Quality

77.8% responded 'strongly feel' or 'somewhat feel,' indicating that many companies have experienced a 'difference in vendor attitude before and after contract signing.'

While sales and project managers provide robust support during the setup phase, the operational phase often shifts toward ticket-based support and resource management, leading to reduced proactive improvement suggestions and partnership-like engagement.

This result also indicates a weakness in the EC support industry regarding CX (customer experience) during ongoing operations.

Additionally, one could argue that the difficulty in switching to another vendor once a cart system is implemented (high cancellation barriers) has fostered a trend of declining service quality.

Question: In operating your EC site, if there were a third party (support company) to organize information, mediate communication, and provide objective judgment between your company and the EC cart vendor, do you think operational efficiency and communication would improve?

Need for Third-Party Support

81.3% responded that 'having a third party would be beneficial,' indicating that e-commerce managers already feel that 'vendor and client alone have reached their limits.' There is particularly strong expectation for PMO-like roles in information organization, project coordination, and objective evaluation.

In the EC industry, demand may be growing not only for system implementation support, but also for 'operational traffic controllers.'

Question: Regarding the EC cart system industry or vendor support, please select the statement that best matches your personal experience. (Multiple answers allowed)

Current State of EC Cart Vendors

Both 'wanting to make improvements but unable to act quickly' and 'inconsistent vendor responses' ranked highest at 39.8%. This indicates that many EC companies feel a sense of stagnation—'maintaining the status quo is possible, but improvement speed is insufficient.' A key characteristic is that the industry's challenge lies not in major obstacles, but in the accumulation of small, persistent frustrations.

For more details, please see below.

View all survey results here

Related article

Must-read if you're dissatisfied with your EC cart vendor: 10 checklist items for selecting the right cart

■ About EC Marketing Co., Ltd.

Since its founding in 2010, the company has supported clients' web businesses across diverse industries for over 15 years. As a web design and redesign consulting firm specializing in creating digital mechanisms that drive sales, we will continue to comprehensively solve web-related challenges and deliver measurable results.

EC Marketing Co., Ltd.

■ About Webly

A web media platform operated by EC Marketing Co., Ltd. Since its launch in November 2016,