世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Research carried out their eighth survey into web-based mail service opinions, in conjuction with Anchor Research and japan.internet.com. 1,065 people from goo’s internet montior group replies to the poll questions, 41.41% male, and 40.75% in their thirties.

I use web mail rather heavily – in fact my mail for this domain is managed through a webmail service, autoforwarded to GMail, where I then pick it up, along with two other mail boxes. My permanent mail address is reserved for non-blog-related spam. Note that in Q7 below I discover data that significantly disagrees with that obtained from a previous survey regarding New Year cards.

Q1: Do you use web mail? (Sample size=1,065)

Yes	82.82% (882 people)
No	17.18% (183 people)

All eight surveys have given a usage rate of just a few points over 80%.

Q2: How do you evaluate your most-used web mail service in the following categories? (Sample size=882)

	Satisfied	A bit satisfied	Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied	A bit dissatisfied	Dissatisfied
Mail box size	34.47%	32.20%	24.15%	6.69%	2.49%
Page design	24.83%	40.82%	27.55%	5.78%	1.02%
Page legibility	24.72%	42.06%	25.71%	6.58%	1.47%
Useability	23.70%	40.70%	23.81%	9.41%	2.38%
Web page responsiveness	19.50%	35.03%	30.95%	12.02%	2.49%
Service stability	19.05%	35.71%	33.67%	9.75%	1.81%
Feature set richness	16.21%	34.58%	41.38%	6.46%	1.36%

Q3: How often do you use any web-based mail service? (Sample size=882)

Every day	63.72%
Three to five times a week	14.17%
Once or twice a week	11.68%
Once or twice a month	8.50%
Once or twice a year	19.3%

Q4: How many web mail service mail addresses do you have? (Sample size=882)

One	28.68%
Two	29.48%
Three	22.34%
Four	6.80%
Five or more	12.70%

Q5: Do you use the following web mail features? (Sample size=882, multiple answer)

	Use	Feature present but don’t use	Don’t know the feature	Don’t know if offered, or know not offered
Mail blocking	46.26%	34.24%	10.09%	9.41%
Virus scanning	41.95%	27.66%	14.63%	15.76%
Mail classification	35.83%	36.17%	17.01%	11.00%
POP mail access	33.56%	30.16%	22.11%	14.17%
Mail sending and receiving via standard mail package	29.71%	29.25%	24.15%	16.89%
HTML mail authoring	24.94%	39.46%	20.98%	14.63%
Design personalisation	23.02%	34.13%	26.53%	16.33%
Mail search	19.05%	34.47%	27.46%	18.03%
Mail notification	17.80%	36.51%	25.74%	19.95%
Access from mobile phone	12.81%	32.65%	30.27%	24.26%
Auto-responder	10.54%	45.35%	24.94%	19.16%
Mail address changing	9.86%	30.61%	34.13%	25.40%
Automatic forwarding	4.76%	36.28%	37.07%	21.88%

Mail blocking includes spam detection and elimination, so along with virus scaanning, making mail safer seems to be the most important feature.

Q6: If your currently-used free web mail service became a pay-for service, would you continue to use it? (Sample size=882)

Yes	8.39
Depends on cost	43.42
No	48.19

Q7: This year, have you sent or do you plan to send Christmas or New Year cards, or other greetings cards, or greetings email? (Sample size=1,065, multiple answer)

Year of the Dog 2006 New Year postcard	44.60%
Year of the Dog 2006 New Year email	30.14%
Christmas card	22.82%
Christmas email	21.78%
Birthday card	17.28%
Birthday email	23.19%
Send none, and no plans to send any	37.18%

Note that here email covers any electronically delivered message, not just a plain old email but also fancy flash-based third-party greetings card. (But what does this have to do with web mail?)

Cross-referencing with a survey from SourceNext on New Year greetings earlier this year, I see that there over 85% of people said they were planning on sending Year of the Dog 年賀状, ねんがじょう, nengajou whereas here only half as many plan to.

I also stated in that blog entry that:

In Japan, Christmas cards are, obviously, almost unheard of [...]

However, at least a little over 20% are planning to send Christmas greetings in one form or another, according to this test of public opinion, so it seems my assumption about the season’s greetings in that previous post was wrong. In fact, the figures suggest that birthday cards are sent more rarely than Christmas cards. A more detailed examination of the demographics in this and the other survey may be needed in order to resolve these two wildly different rates of New Year card sending. There is a nagging suspicion, however, that since the SourceNext survey was carried out by a company that produces New Year card design software, it would be more in their interests to demonstrate the majority were planning on sending them.

Q8: For those who don’t use web mail services, why not? (Sample size=183, multiple answer)

Current mail service is sufficient	89.07%
Insufficient security measures	8.74%
Don’t know how to use them	8.74%
I don’t want to give my personal information	7.65%
Troublesome registration procedures for them	5.46%
Uneasy about using these systems	2.19%
Service would seem to respond slowly	2.19%
Other	3.28%
I didn’t know there were web-based mail services	5.46%

Q9: For those who don’t use web mail services, may you want to use them in the future? (Sample size=183)

Definitely want to use	1.09%
Want to use	24.59%
Don’t really want to use	53.55%
Don’t want to use	20.77%