世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com and goo Research recently performed a survey to see what brands sprung to mind when various products were mentioned. They questioned 1,084 people from goo’s pool of monitors, 42.53% male, 57.47% female, with 66.14% aged from 10 (well, it’s actually from 15, as that’s the minimum age for joining the goo Research monitor group) to 39, and 33.86% aged from 40 to 69.

As a slight digression, the original story did have these percentages to two decimal places, which seems an unnecessarily high degree of accuracy. Since the sample size is 1,084 people, one person equates to just over 0.09% of the sample, therefore quoting the percentages to two decimal places implies more accuracy than is possible from the sample size.

As a second slight digression, I’ve been a bit disappointed by goo Research recently – their main research results index now mostly points to japan.internet.com stories which only report a handful of the highlights from their survey, rather than the full gory details. Perhaps for you as a reader the short sharp story is easier to digest, but for me, often the juicer statistics are glossed over.

Note that this questionnaire is related to brand awareness, not actual sales figures, which often differ quite greatly from the numbers presented below; Matsushita/Viera is number one in terms of sales of flat screen TVs in Japan, USA and Europe, for instance.

Q1: What company first springs to mind when you hear “Flat-screen Television (LCD or Plasma)”? (Sample size=1,084, free answer)

Sharp (AQUOS)	72.0%
Matsushita (Viera)	9.3%
Sony (Bravia)	8.2%
Hitachi	3.5%
Toshiba	2.5%
Pioneer	1.8%
Other	0.4%
Don’t know	2.2%

Q2: What company first springs to mind when you hear “Digital Camera”? (Sample size=1,084, free answer)

Canon	55.2%
Olympus	13.5%
Sony (Cyber Shot)	10.3%
Fujifilm	9.8%
Nikon (Coolpix)	4.2%
Matsushita (Lumix)	3.6%
Other	1.6%
Don’t know	1.7%

Q3: What company first springs to mind when you hear “Portable games machine”? (Sample size=1,084, free answer)

Nintendo DS	58.3%
Sony PSP	35.1%
Other	1.9%
Don’t know	4.8%

Another statistic presented in this report were those for portable audio players. Not surprisingly, number one was Apple, at 64.2%; their iPod currently has a market share of around 60% in Japan. Next was Sony at 18.1%, followed by iRiver at just 3.5%.

Finally, for mobile phones, first came NEC at 37.3%, then Sharp at 20.1%, followed by Matsushita at an unreported percentage.