M

Mercari

Peer-to-peer mobile marketplace for secondhand goods

Research Scientist, ELSI Intern - ELSI, Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

InternshipUpdated on 10/23/2026
No salary listed
Master's, PhD
Minato City, Tokyo, Japan
HybridHybrid workplace in Minato City, Japan.
Academic & Institutional ResearchSocial & Behavioral Sciences

About the job

Requirements
  • A master's degree or higher in a humanities or social sciences field such as ethics, philosophy, or sociology; expected degrees are accepted.
  • A track record of conducting interdisciplinary research beyond one's own area of expertise.
  • Experience participating in and driving projects involving multiple experts and practitioners.
  • Ability to analyze and articulate the social impact of technology from multiple perspectives.
  • Ability to translate humanities and social sciences knowledge into practical knowledge and systems usable within an organization.
  • Japanese proficiency at CEFR B2 or higher.
  • English proficiency at CEFR B2 or higher.
Responsibilities
  • Analyze the social impact of advanced technologies researched and developed by R4D and other internal departments, including AI, robotics, real-world assets, augmented and virtual reality, and quantum computing, and incorporate findings into research plans.
  • Construct risk-assessment frameworks and conduct specific assessments in view of implementing advanced technologies in Mercari products and society.
  • Collaborate with R4D and product teams to formulate and operate guidelines and advise on ethical considerations from early development stages.
  • Build and operate systems to continuously update existing guidelines in response to technological advancements and social changes.
  • Proactively collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and take ownership of project management.
  • Monitor domestic and international regulations and standards, such as the EU AI Act, and analyze and propose their impact on the business.
  • Summarize research findings for presentation at domestic and international conferences and submission to academic journals.
Desired Qualifications
  • A Ph.D. in a humanities or social sciences field, either completed or in progress.
  • Research experience in ELSI related to advanced technologies such as AI and robotics.
  • Practical experience in technology assessment, evaluating the social impact of technology.
  • Experience working on ELSI-related projects at technology companies, think tanks, or public research institutions.
  • Project management experience in teams with diverse areas of expertise.

About the company

M

Mercari

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Mercari runs a mobile peer-to-peer marketplace that lets people buy and sell secondhand goods across categories like fashion and electronics. Sellers list items by taking photos in the app, buyers browse and complete purchases, with payments held in escrow and integrated shipping options to secure transactions. It earns revenue from selling fees in different regions (about 10%), plus services like Merpay and promoted listings, and differentiates itself with a simple mobile experience, buyer protection, escrow, and business-enabled Mercari Shops. Its goal is to promote sustainable consumption by extending the life of goods and supporting a circular economy through a large global community.

Company Size

1,001-5,000

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

Tokyo, Japan

Founded

2013

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • FY2026 revenue reached ¥229.29 billion, up 19%, with record core profit.
  • Mercari US GMV hit $810 million, and active users returned to growth.
  • September 2026 GENIAC selection funds AI robotics for listing and inspection automation.

What critics are saying

  • The 2024 U.S. fee backlash proved Mercari can still alienate buyers overnight.
  • eBay, Poshmark, Depop, and Vinted pressure Mercari in fashion and collectibles.
  • Slow buyer growth in the U.S. can cap Mercari's turnaround before 2027.

What makes Mercari unique

  • Mercari Japan's 4 billion listings create unmatched Japanese resale selection.
  • Mercari controls inspection, shipping, translation, and payment for cross-border purchases.
  • Mercari combines consumer P2P listings with professional MDepartment luxury recommerce.

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Benefits

  • Remote Work Options
  • Flexible Work Hours
  • Health Insurance
  • Parental Leave
  • Wellness Program

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

2%
Value Added Resource
Oct 19th, 2026
Mercari offers free holiday shipping on $50+ orders, brings back Fashion Exchange.

Mercari offers free holiday shipping on $50+ orders, brings back Fashion Exchange. Published: Oct 19 2026 Updated: Oct 19 2026 Mercari is offering free shipping on qualifying orders of $50 or more this holiday season, bringing back its Fashion Exchange program and introducing additional shipping protection options for sellers. The company announced the upcoming changes in emails to buyers and sellers October 17, just two days before previously announced shipping rate increases take effect across USPS, UPS and FedEx. The free shipping promotion runs from October 22 through January 4, 2027, covering eligible individual items and bundled purchases from the same seller. Under the terms, single-item purchases must use Mercari's Best Rate prepaid shipping option, while bundles qualify regardless of shipping rate or carrier. Both are limited to orders of $50 or more weighing no more than 5 lbs, with additional size restrictions for individual shipments. The promotion is the latest in a series of temporary shipping incentives Mercari has used to stimulate US sales, including free First Class Envelope shipping for some trading cards and an extension of its discounted 49¢ envelope rate through January 4. Mercari had also teased another holiday shipping promotion when announcing its October 19 rate increases, but had not previously disclosed the details. Unlike those earlier offers targeting lower-priced collectibles, the new promotion encourages larger purchases and bundles, both priorities management discussed in its latest earnings report. Mercari US reported 15% year-over-year GMV growth in fiscal Q4 2026, with Monthly Active Users increasing 4% to 4.2 million. The company has credited shipping discounts and strength in Entertainment & Hobbies with helping drive its recent growth. Mercari is targeting at least 10% US GMV growth in fiscal 2027 while maintaining roughly break-even profitability, with increasing average purchase amounts among management's priorities. During the August earnings Q&A, executives specifically discussed bundles as a way to spread shipping costs across multiple lower-priced purchases. The new $50 threshold could help encourage those larger purchases and bundles, though Mercari has not disclosed how much it expects to spend on the promotion or what impact it anticipates on order volume. Mercari is also bringing back Fashion Exchange for the holidays, allowing buyers to return select clothing, shoes and bags for Mercari credit when purchases don't fit, have an unpleasant smell or otherwise don't meet expectations. Sellers will still receive their full payment and an automatic rating, with Mercari handling the exchange process and associated costs. The program was first introduced as a limited pilot in July 2025, covering select clothing items priced at $100 or less, before returning later that year with expanded eligibility for bags and shoes during the holiday shopping season. Under the previous Fashion Exchange terms, buyers had 72 hours after delivery to request an exchange, with approved items shipped back to Mercari rather than the original seller. Instead of receiving a refund to their original payment method, buyers were issued Mercari credits that expired after 30 days. A start date has not yet been announced and Mercari has not confirmed whether the previous $100 price limit and other eligibility restrictions will apply this time. The company has brought Fashion Exchange back repeatedly since its initial pilot without making it a permanent part of its return policy. Mercari also told sellers it will soon introduce Shipping Protection Plus+, an optional program offering additional protection against loss or damage in transit for higher-value merchandise. Under the marketplace's existing Shipping Protection policy, eligible shipments using Mercari prepaid labels are covered for up to $200 on standard, economy and Media Mail services, or up to $20 for First Class Envelopes, subject to packaging, shipping and claims requirements. The new option would allow sellers to add coverage beyond those existing limits, but Mercari has not yet announced a launch date, pricing, maximum coverage amounts or whether any additional eligibility restrictions will apply. Liz Morton is founder and editor of Value Added Resource. She spent 17+ years operating ecommerce businesses before launching VAR. Her reporting focuses on seller experience, marketplace strategy and corporate accountability.

Zenbird Media
Oct 1st, 2026
Japan METI's cicrular Economy Action Week begins today.

Japan METI's cicrular Economy Action Week begins today. From today until 7 October, METI is running its "Circular Economy (CE) Action Week," timed to coincide with the annual 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) Promotion Month that government ministries hold every October. Rather than another top-down advocacy for recycling or policy announcement, the campaign is asking consumers to adopt a circular habit of buying, using, separating and, eventually, circulating. Ten companies are helping consumers to visualise how the habits look like in their own way. Fashion rental service airCloset is discounting its first month's subscription by up to 30%, while furniture rental platform CLAS is cutting monthly fees on its CIRCLE range by as much as half. Suntory is publishing videos and quizzes on its bottle-to-bottle horizontal recycling, and Seven-Eleven Japan is pointing customers back to its in-store PET bottle collection machines, which have now taken in a cumulative 800 million bottles, rewarding five bottles with one nanaco point. Panasonic is launching a subscription water purifier that does away with disposable bottles altogether, Bandai Spirits is showcasing its Gunpla plastic model recycling scheme, Lion is collecting used toothbrushes for reprocessing, and Kao is using social media to explain its own resource loops. Reform Studio is hosting hands-on repair and remake sessions at AEON Mall Urawa Misono from 2 to 4 October. There will also be a physical event, to be held at MARK IS Minatomirai, where a Pac-Man tie-in event on 3 and 4 October turns waste sorting into a ticket to arcade play. Mercari, meanwhile, is reaching both ends of the generational spectrum, offering a week-long social media giveaway, while their Mercari Kids Flea Market events in Tokyo on 17 October and Osaka on 25 October let children try buying and selling first-hand. In additional to the campaign, METI also unveiled a "CE Action" logo to mark its launch. Any member of its Circular Partners (CPs) network, a roughly 600-strong public-private partnership, can now use on their own materials.

Swiftlisted
Sep 18th, 2026
How to crosslist from Mercari to Poshmark: A reseller's guide.

How to crosslist from Mercari to Poshmark: A reseller's guide. Published 2026-09-18 If you already sell on Mercari, bringing your active catalogue over to Poshmark is one of the most effective ways to increase sales. Poshmark operates as a social commerce platform with a large buyer base for fashion and lifestyle items, while Mercari functions as a straightforward resale app. Learning how to crosslist your items between both marketplaces lets you reach two distinct audiences without spending hours retyping every listing by hand. Understanding the differences: Mercari vs Poshmark. Mercari and Poshmark attract different buyer demographics and use distinct listing structures. Mercari caters to search-driven shoppers looking for clothing, electronics, home goods, and collectibles. Poshmark leans heavily into social commerce, where community sharing, brand followings, and curated party feeds drive secondhand fashion discovery. When you crosslist items between channels, you must account for each platform's listing requirements. Poshmark relies on structured brand mapping profiles and specific sizing conventions, whereas Mercari offers a simpler listing structure. Adapting your inventory to fit each platform ensures your items rank well in search results and convert into sales. Key capabilities for crosslisting success. Manually copying titles, descriptions, prices, and photos between platforms takes significant time. Modern crosslisting workflows streamline this process by automating how inventory details transition between marketplaces. * Dynamic size mapper: Translates footwear and apparel sizes into the correct target marketplace taxonomy. * Brand mapping profiles: Aligns listing details with approved platform brand directories. * Real-time sold delisting: Detects sales across connected channels to remove sold items automatically and prevent double sales. * Single-click crossposting: Sends prepared drafts straight to your target marketplace accounts. Setting up your desktop listing environment. To run your crosslisting workflow efficiently, you need a desktop or laptop computer running Google Chrome. Listing automation relies on browser extensions to communicate with your signed-in seller accounts, which mobile web browsers cannot support. While web dashboards let you review inventory on a phone, photographing, drafting, and crosslisting items requires a desktop browser setup. Make sure you remain signed in to your marketplace seller accounts in Chrome. Swiftlisted is building dedicated integration lanes for Mercari and Poshmark on its roadmap. Once these lanes ship, you will be able to crosslist, translate categories, and synchronise sold items seamlessly across both platforms alongside currently supported channels. Best practices for managing multi-channel inventory. Maintaining an organised central stockroom is essential when selling across multiple channels. Keep track of item states - whether an item is a draft, live, or sold - so you always know where your stock is listed. During photography, always capture clear, well-lit shots of size tags and brand labels. Clear photos help automated vision tools draft titles, descriptions, and categories accurately, making your review process fast and straightforward before hitting post. Common questions. * Can I crosslist from Mercari to Poshmark on a mobile phone? - No. Crosslisting automation requires a desktop or laptop computer running Google Chrome with the extension installed. Mobile browsers do not support extension automation, though you can view your stockroom dashboard on mobile. * Do I need existing seller accounts on both marketplaces? - Yes. Swiftlisted posts directly to your existing store accounts on connected marketplaces - it does not create new marketplace accounts for you. * How does sold detection prevent double sales? - When an item sells on one connected platform, background sold detection detects the purchase, updates your central inventory record, and delists the sold item across your other channels. * What do I need to start crosslisting with Swiftlisted? - You need a desktop or laptop running Google Chrome, the Swiftlisted Chrome extension, item photos, and active seller accounts on the marketplaces you sell on. List once, sell everywhere. Swiftlisted photographs, describes and crosslists your stock across every marketplace you sell on - then delists it everywhere when it sells.

Mercari, Inc.
Sep 9th, 2026
Mercari Selected for GENIAC robotics foundation model R&D project, implemented by METI and NEDO.

Mercari Selected for GENIAC robotics foundation model R&D project, implemented by METI and NEDO. Kicking off research on automating item inspection and listing to support the expansion of crossborder transactions. Mercari, Inc. ("Mercari") is pleased to announce that its research project "Research and Development on Leveraging AI Robots for Listing and Inspection Tasks" has been selected for the Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC), a national initiative spearheaded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). The aim of the national initiative is to strengthen the development capabilities and social implementation of generative AI in Japan. Mercari is in the midst of driving its transformation into an "AI-Native Company," focusing on rebuilding all of its organizations, development processes, and products around AI technologies. For this project, Mercari's R&D organization R4D will conduct research and development on physical AI to automate Mercari's inspection and listing tasks. R4D will use Mercari's inspection and shipping facility, which handles a wide variety of items, as a real-world testing environment. Researchers will work on three key initiatives: building on Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models[1] to create multimodal models that integrate touch and force sensing; developing camera-aware VLA models that can handle viewpoint changes; and building a data collection framework that captures and transfers the actual sensations of human work. Using this technology, researchers will strive to optimize logistics efficiency in Mercari's crossborder transactions. This is the second time this year that a Mercari project has been selected for GENIAC. The first project, announced in June, was titled "Development of a High-Precision Search and Recommendation Platform Model for the Secondary-Distribution Market Using Generative Retrieval Technology."[2] 1. AI model that interprets visual input captured from a camera and natural language commands given by a human to generate the actions of a robot in a physical space. 2. Mercari Selected for GENIAC - Generative AI Accelerator Challenge Led by METI and NEDO (https://about.mercari.com/en/press/news/articles/20260604_geniac/) The challenges of automating the inspection tasks supporting the expansion of crossborder transactions and of working with current physical AI models. In September 2025, Mercari launched the Mercari Global App, a worldwide app that allows buyers overseas to more easily, safely, and securely buy from Mercari users in Japan. The app is currently available in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US, with Mercari working to expand its reach by aiming to launch the same product to over 100 additional countries and territories over the mid to long term. One of the critical pieces of infrastructure behind this crossborder growth is Mercari's inspection and shipping facility. To facilitate safe and secure transactions, Japan-sourced items purchased by users overseas are collected at Mercari's facility, where they undergo inspection before they are shipped overseas. Because Mercari's crossborder transactions deal with items across various categories, items vary widely in shape and condition. Inspection also involves handling deformable items such as fabrics and bags, and manipulating components like buttons and zippers. These are tasks that are difficult to automate with conventional model-based robot control alone. In recent years, VLA models - which generate actions directly from vision and language input - have emerged and are expected to be useful in environments like these. However, in adopting current VLA models for use in item inspection and other such tasks, the following three major pain points arise: * The robot's behavior relies solely on visual information input through cameras, and it cannot gauge the appropriate amount of force to apply to an item based on its feel and response * If the camera angle during inference differs even slightly from the images the model was trained on, the trained robot becomes unable to perform the appropriate operations * Data collection through robot teleoperation is inefficient In this project, Mercari's inspection and shipping facility - which handles a wide variety of irregular items - will serve as a real-world testing environment for technical innovations aimed at overcoming these limitations of VLA models. The success of this project will do more than just further accelerate the rapidly expanding growth of Mercari's crossborder business. It aims to contribute to the establishment of physical AI infrastructure that can be applied to the physical tasks of various industries. About GENIAC. The Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC) is a project spearheaded by METI and NEDO with the aim of strengthening the development capabilities and social implementation of generative AI in Japan. * GENIAC website: https://geniac.meti.go.jp/ * Selection announcement webpage (available only in Japanese): https://www.nedo.go.jp/koubo/CD3_100434.html For more details on this research, see the accompanying article on the R4D website. https://r4d.mercari.com/en/news/20260909_geniac_pjysicalai_details/ Mercari will continue to connect communities across industry, academia, and government, contributing to the development of cutting-edge technology and social implementation while pioneering the path toward undiscovered value.

AIM Group
Jul 14th, 2026
Mercari launches new luxury recommerce marketplace

Mercari launches new luxury recommerce marketplace July 14, 2026 by Tariq Ahmed Saeedi Editor's Pick