世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently performed a survey by their usual means of a self-selecting public poll available through the iMode menus regarding eating out. 5,926 people successfully completed the questionnaire between June 6th and 13th of this year, of which 67.2% were female.

I’ve previously translated a more detailed poll on eating out habits, but this one contains perhaps a few new revelations that weren’t apparent from the earlier survey. For me, I feel anything over 2,000 yen is a bit dear, and 2,500 yen is definitely pushing the boat out, although it must be noted that we don’t drink alcohol and usually only have just the one soft drink each, often free or discounted within the course menu we usually choose.

I often use discount coupons from free papers like Hot Pepper, but I didn’t realise that they were so favoured by women. It’s also interesting to note that although men eat out much more frequently than women, most of the restaurants I go to the ratio is more like 80% or more female. An interesting future survey may be on the type of restaurant people frequent; men appear to me to spend their time in pubs or the Japanese equivalent of a Greasy Spoon.

Since word of mouth is the top way of finding where to eat, why doesn’t someone start an English-language Japan restaurant Web two point naught CGM AJAX thingamajig?

Q1: Usually, how frequently do you eat out? (Sample size=5,926)

	All	Male N=1,945	Female N=3,981
Almost every day	8.9%	17.7%	4.7%
Twice or thrice a week	16.6%	17.8%	16.0%
Once a week	23.4%	21.2%	24.5%
Twice or thrice a month	26.4%	21.5%	28.8%
Once a month	13.3%	11.3%	14.3%
Once every two or three months	6.7%	5.3%	7.3%
Less than that	3.7%	3.2%	3.9%
Don’t usually eat out	1.0%	1.8%	0.6%

Looking at the age breakdown, for both women and men no significant trends were noted.

Q2: When looking for somewhere to eat out, which one way do you most often obtain information? (Sample size=5,669)

	All	Male N=1,810	Female N=3,859
Word of mouth	35.9%	35.0%	36.3%
Free paper	20.5%	12.9%	24.0%
Leaflets	11.4%	12.5%	10.9%
Magazines	11.1%	13.3%	10.1%
Mobile phone-based internet	5.6%	6.6%	5.1%
PC-based internet	4.9%	6.9%	4.0%
Television	2.7%	3.0%	2.6%
Direct mail	0.3%	0.2%	0.4%
Email magazine	0.2%	0.4%	0.1%
Other	7.4%	9.3%	6.5%

One interesting figure from the age breakdown is that over 80% of women over 50 most often obtained their information relatively passively – over half by word of mouth, another quarter by advertising leaflets, and a couple of percent by direct mail, the biggest percentage in the first two categories, and second only to men over 50 for direct mail.

Question 3, which I think I shall not present as a table as it is rather a large and complicated table, asked when looking for somewhere to eat according to the method chosen in Q2, what were the important points (up to three answers) when making a selection?

Menu and price, not surprisingly, were the two most important points for nearly everyone. Those who selected restaurants according to leaflets found these two points the most important; perhaps because the typical restaurant advertising leaflet usually has a detailed list of what is available at what price. Location came next for just about everyone, but for the other points, reviews were over twice as important for those finding restaurants by word of mouth than by any other method. Coupon availability was important to 41.2% of those chosing a restaurant from direct mail, beating free paper readers at 34.6%, then mobile phone users at 32.8%. Interestingly, for PC internet searchers coupons were only about half as important, at 17.7%. Less than 3% regardless of search method chose credit card acceptance as one of their three key reasons for choosing a location.

Q4: When eating out, paying about how much per head makes you feel you splurged out that day? (Sample size=5,869)

	All	Male N=1,910	Female N=3,959
Less than 1,000 yen	1.3%	2.2%	0.9%
1,000 to 3,000 yen	22.9%	22.9%	22.9%
3,000 to 5,000 yen	35.2%	29.3%	38.1%
5,000 to 7,000 yen	22.0%	19.5%	23.3%
7,000 to 10,000 yen	9.8%	12.2%	8.6%
10,000 to 15,000 yen	6.0%	9.2%	4.4%
15,000 to 20,000 yen	1.4%	1.9%	1.1%
20,000 to 30,000 yen	0.8%	1.6%	0.5%
Over 30,000 yen	0.6%	1.3%	0.3%

Across the age bands, as one might expect, a significantly higher percentage of teenagers felt just 1,000 to 3,000 yen was a lot of money to pay, as did men over 50. Most of the rest of the figures were pretty constant regardless of age.

Whether or not drinks, either soft or alcoholic, are factored into the above answers is not stated.