世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.

As a point of reference, 70.3% of the sample size currently use a bricks and mortar rental DVD or video store.

Q1: Do you know what sort of service an online DVD rental service provides? (Sample size=1,061)

Yes, and have used (to Q2)	7.0%
Yes, but haven’t used (to Q3)	68.1%
No (to Q3)	24.9%

Q2: Please tell me the name of the online DVD rental service you currently use. (Sample size=74)

	Number	Percentage
TSUTAYA DISCAS	41	55.4%
ぽすれん Posren	14	18.9%
DMM	12	16.2%
GEOLAND	7	9.5%
Other	0	0.0%

Of these 74 users, just over one in ten (8 people) did not think it was a convenient service, which begs the question as to why are they using the service!

Q3: Would you like to try using an online DVD rental service? (Sample size=987)

Want to use	22.0%
Don’t want to use	36.8%
Don’t know	41.2%

When asked how much they would expect to have to pay per month for such a service, 73.7% (of the 987 above, I think) said under 1,000 yen, with 23.0% prepared to pay 1,000 to 2,000 yen. The standard price for the various online DVD rental services is currently round about 2,000 yen.