Demand for frozen gyudon soars due to stay-at-home consumption

Yoshinoya's Frozen Beef Bowl allows you to easily enjoy Yoshinoya's beef bowl, a representative of Japanese fast food, at home. Using the same ingredients and manufacturing method as store-bought products, the quick-frozen products without preservatives have a reputation for being safe for children to eat. Originally, it was a product that was sold only at the co-op, but in 2013, it started selling on the EC site "Yoshinoya Official Mail Order Shop" (hereinafter referred to as the official shop) operated by the company. In addition to their mainstay gyudon, they also sell popular items such as pork bowls and grilled chicken, condiments such as pickled ginger, and canned foods that can be stored at room temperature and can be used as emergency food.

Sales of the entire EC business, which includes official shops and five stores in major EC malls, exceeded 1.5 billion yen in COVID-19. , has achieved significant growth of more than 130% year-on-year. “Since the second half of February 2020, sales on the EC site have increased rapidly, and there was a shortage of beef bowls for a while, which caused inconvenience to customers. (Mr. Kimura).” Like the users of the store, the customers of the e-commerce site were mainly men, but with the increase in stay-at-home consumption, the number of female customers is gradually increasing.

Chargeback of 1.6 million yen occurred in 3 months

At the same time as the rapid increase in sales of the EC business, Yoshinoya began to suffer from fraudulent orders at the official shop. From around the end of February 2020, fraudulent use centered on high-value credit card orders occurred, and a large amount of chargebacks (refunds to credit card companies due to unauthorized use) occurred.

At first, Yoshinoya took countermeasures by using the "mischief detection function" of the cart system used in the official shop. It is a method of registering phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, names, etc. of chargeback transactions that occurred in the past in a blacklist, manually checking high-value orders before shipping, and stopping shipping if it is determined to be fraudulent. . For this reason, Mr. Kimura, the head of the department, sometimes took 30 minutes to an hour to confirm by phone or stop shipping for all high-value transactions above a certain amount. With this method, the damage was temporarily contained around early May, but as a result, there were about 40 cases in the three months from February 2020, with a cumulative total of more than 1.6 million yen. “Whenever a suspicious order comes in, it is necessary to conduct a phone survey and suspend shipments manually. (Mr. Kimura)

Selected anti-fraud service (Sift) with the highest priority on "not impairing the customer experience"

When we consulted with GMO Payment Gateway (GMO-PG), a payment agency that provides the payment system used by Yoshinoya, about countermeasures against unauthorized use of credit cards, they decided to introduce 3D Secure, a fraud detection system, etc. Several methods have been proposed.

When considering countermeasures, first of all, we gave top priority to not hindering the user's purchasing experience, and decided not to introduce 3D Secure. “Many of our official shop customers are unfamiliar with shopping on e-commerce. If there are more items to be entered when ordering, or if a screen from a different site is displayed during payment, customers will leave. was a concern.” (Mr. Kimura)

For the fraud detection system, there was a proposal for a fraud prevention service (Sift) and another service. The reason for choosing the fraud prevention service (Sift) is cost advantage. “Even though the functions didn’t seem to change much, the other service was more expensive than the fraud prevention service (Sift) in terms of initial costs, fixed costs, and transaction fees. My concern was that the management screen was all in English, but it was designed to be intuitive and easy to understand, so I decided to take this opportunity to study English as well." (Mr. Suwa)

Yoshinoya immediately decided to introduce it, thinking that if the trend to refrain from eating out due to the COVID-19 would continue for the time being, the number of fraudulent orders would increase. Development started in August 2020, when the system of the cart service provider responsible for system development was in place, and operation in the production environment began in late October. Several shops that use the same cart system have already introduced a fraud prevention service (Sift), and the cart service provider has the know-how, so it was possible to introduce it more quickly than usual.

In the staging environment test conducted in early October 2020, we were able to confirm that the customer's purchasing experience is completely unchanged. "There was absolutely no concern that the customer would experience any inconvenience or stress when placing an order, so we were able to implement the system with peace of mind." (Mr. Kimura)

Realize the strength of using machine learning to respond to changes in modus operandi

Currently, transactions with a score of 40 or more calculated by the fraud prevention service (Sift) are reviewed as "hold" the next morning, and shipments are suspended for transactions that are determined to be fraudulent. Since we want to avoid stopping the original customer's order by any chance, we do not stop shipping automatically, but continue to operate with human confirmation. "Even if a transaction is flagged, if the transaction is correct, such as a customer who has a history of purchases in the past, we try to cancel the warning." (Mr. Kimura) For fear of causing trouble to unscrupulous customers, confirmation of transaction details was lax, and fraudulent activities were sometimes overlooked. After the introduction, we have been able to significantly reduce oversights with the objective index of scores. The time taken to review each questionable order was reduced to 30 minutes per day, which was a significant reduction compared to the 30 minutes to an hour spent reviewing each questionable order.

Before the introduction of the anti-fraud service (Sift), in March 2020, when the damage was the most severe, 11 chargebacks occurred in one month, but after three months from the introduction, the number dropped to about one per month. decreased. “Even now, there are about 20 to 30 transactions a month where shipments are suspended based on a warning from the fraud prevention service (Sift). It's scary just to imagine it," says Mr. Kimura.

After introducing the fraud prevention service (Sift), the trend of fraudulent orders gradually changed. Realizing that high-value orders would be stopped from shipping, the perpetrators reduced the amount of each transaction and instead placed more frequent orders. “Only once did we miss a fraudulent order with a smaller amount than before, but once we taught our fraud prevention service (Sift) that that order was fraudulent, we were able to detect smaller fraudulent orders the next time. We are now able to issue warnings as well.'' (Mr. Kimura) We are experiencing the strength of the fraud prevention service (Sift), which uses machine learning rather than a predefined rule base to respond to changes in techniques. Although they were concerned about the English language issue, the system has been able to operate without any problems thanks to the Japanese documentation provided by Macnica networks a technology trading company, and the generous support of engineers.

The key to protecting the official shop, which is becoming more important

“In order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 infection, the number of customers who cannot go to stores even if they want to go is increasing due to refraining from going out and shortening the business hours of restaurants. We often receive inquiries about how to operate the official shop, and I feel that many customers who usually come to the store are using it.” (Mr. Suwa)

The e-commerce site also plays an important role in cultivating customers that Yoshinoya has not been able to reach, such as women and families who find it difficult to enter stores where there are many male customers. While raising the awareness of frozen beef bowls at major e-commerce mall shops, by offering products that are only available at the official shop and special regular flights, we hope that many people will have the experience of having Yoshinoya beef bowls at home whenever they want. I want to offer it to people.

In order to achieve Yoshinoya's goal of ``making gyudon the national dish,'' Yoshinoya intends to continue focusing on sales at official shops. Although the introduction of the fraud prevention service (Sift) has significantly reduced the number of fraudulent card uses, the number of warnings about fraudulent orders that have been prevented continues to increase. "Actually, I wish we could prevent people who make fraudulent orders from accessing the site in the first place, but we don't want to eliminate the ease of purchasing without registering as a member. GMO-PG and Macnica networks will continue to be the victims of fraudulent use. I hope they will consult with us on how to reduce this," Kimura hopes.