Profit Margin Competitiveness

These days, I've seen a training material that explains cosumer goods and services industry overview. The material is quite useful because information over main players, past and expected growth rate, sub-category market share and trends and key terms of each market segment.

Looking at the training material, I was astonished to find that despite their sizieable sales volume that can match that of American and European competitors, the profit margins of Japanese, even leading, companies are by far lower than those of American and European rivals; around 10% for Japanese, whereas Americans and Europeans reap more than 20% profit from their sales.

If this situation can be applied to one of every sub markets of consumer goods and services industry, I can consider what I found "coincidental". I could find relatively same things when I was taking a look at each market profile...

Why those Japanese companies cannot match their American and European rivals in terms of operation profit margin...