世論 What Japan Thinks

With summer coming up soon and thoughts turning towards travel, NEPRO Japan recently published the results of a survey it conducted on the topic of mobile phones and holidays. Here holidays covers everything from day trips to overseas travel.

Demographics

Over the 10th and 11th of May 2007 3,866 self-selecting users chose to complete a survey made available through the three major mobile menuing systems; NTT DoCoMo’s iMode, SoftBank’s Yahoo! Keitai, and au’s EZweb. 58% of the respondents were female, 3% in their teens, 34% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 19% aged forty or older. As has been noted before for infoPLANT surveys, the self-selecting sample nature tends to attract heavy mobile phone users.

This is a rather disappointing study as a number of questions that I think should be multiple choice are asked as single answer ones, for instance. When we’ve been on domestic travel, we’ve never used our mobiles for anything other than just email or photographs, and international travel packet charges are too high to even contemplate taking a live mobile along, although wifey does take hers as an address book.

Research results

Q1: When gathering travel information, do you use mobile phone site search? (Sample size=3,866)

Always use	13%
Sometimes use	49%
Don’t use	38%

Q2: What is the main sort of travel information that you obtain through your mobile phone? (Sample size=3,866, multiple answer)

Accommodation	18%
Transport	17%
Sightseeing	10%
Weather	7%
Traffic	6%
Events	2%
Food	2%
Word of mouth	1%
Other	1%
None	36%

The above question is multiple answer, but all the data seems to have been normalised.

Q3: When on domestic travel, do you use mobile phone site search? (Sample size=3,866)

Always use	11%
Sometimes use	46%
Don’t use	36%
Never been on domestic travel	7%

Q4: When on international travel, do you use mobile phone site search? (Sample size=3,866)

Always use	1%
Sometimes use	3%
Don’t use	40%
Never been on domestic travel	56%

Q5: When on domestic or international travel, what sort of keywords did you search for? (Sample size=3,866)

Traffic, timetables, maps, location information	17%
Restaurant information	8%
Weather information	6%
Sightseeing information	6%
Coupons, discount information	4%
Event information	3%
Souvenirs, local produce information	2%
News	0%
Other	2%
Never used	52%