世論 What Japan Thinks

Japan may be one of the top producers of the latest home electrical items, but is it a big consumer of what it produces? With the smallness of the average home being perhaps a factor, how many gadgets make their way to the consumer? Recently infoPLANT (who seem to be in the process of changing their name to Yahoo! Japan Value Insight) published the results of a short survey on home electricals ownership and purchasing plans. Note that this survey was conducted just a month before the summer bonus season started, so perhaps some of the respondents were thinking about what they wanted to buy.

Demographics

Over a week from the 29th of May to the 4th of June 2007 infoPLANT made the survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone system, where 6,606 people, 63.2% female, self-selected themselves and successfully completed the survey.

Personally, we manage just a big fridge, an air purifier and a video camera, and perhaps we would like sometime to buy a hard disk recorder.

Research results

Q1: Which of the following home electrical items do you or your household have? (Sample size=6,606, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=2,428	Female N=4,178
Large refrigerator	41.2%	40.3%	41.7%
Air purifier	37.1%	38.6%	36.2%
Combined hard disk and DVD recorder	29.4%	32.1%	27.8%
LCD television	27.4%	27.6%	27.3%
Video camera/camcorder	24.5%	24.4%	24.5%
Digital audio player	18.2%	22.9%	15.4%
Cyclone cleaner	17.2%	16.5%	17.5%
Dishwasher and dryer	16.2%	16.1%	16.3%
Induction Heating (IH) cooker	12.7%	12.3%	12.9%
High-end Induction Heating (IH) rice cooker	12.5%	12.6%	12.4%
Drum-style washer-dryer	9.8%	10.9%	9.1%
Massage chair	8.7%	9.1%	8.4%
Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera	8.1%	7.4%	8.5%
Bread maker	7.7%	6.5%	8.4%
Home esthetic products	7.3%	3.0%	9.7%
Steam oven	6.9%	6.0%	7.4%
Plasma television	6.3%	5.6%	6.7%
Food disposer	2.8%	2.3%	3.1%
None of the above	13.5%	14.0%	13.2%

I’m not sure what the difference between a high-end and a normal rice cooker is. Almost half of all rice cookers in homes are IH these days, so perhaps it refers to those with fancy jars or with advanced programming features? Drum-type washing machines refers to the horizontal or angled types only, not the more common vertical tubs.

Looking for trends by age, LCD televisions were of a similar popularity across all male age groups, but less popular with older women. Plasma televisions, despite their cost, were most popular with the teenagers (or the families of these teenagers), although I wonder if there was misidentification here? Over half of teenage boys and three-tenths of teenage girls were in families with digital audio players; perhaps here the adults were forgetting (or unaware) of their teenagers’ purchases?

Q2: Which of the following home electrical items do you want to buy (or upgrade) in the future? (Sample size=6,606, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=2,428	Female N=4,178
LCD television	44.1%	51.7%	39.7%
Plasma television	31.4%	29.3%	32.6%
Combined hard disk and DVD recorder	41.4%	47.7%	37.7%
Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera	12.2%	15.7%	10.1%
Video camera/camcorder	16.0%	17.3%	15.2%
Digital audio player	11.4%	14.8%	9.5%
Induction Heating (IH) cooker	10.2%	7.5%	11.8%
High-end Induction Heating (IH) rice cooker	13.8%	11.9%	14.8%
Large refrigerator	15.2%	13.7%	16.1%
Dishwasher and dryer	19.5%	16.9%	21.0%
Steam oven	25.5%	18.7%	29.5%
Bread maker	11.0%	4.5%	14.8%
Food disposer	14.2%	11.2%	16.0%
Drum-style washer-dryer	40.9%	39.1%	42.0%
Cyclone cleaner	31.2%	27.9%	33.1%
Air purifier	20.4%	19.4%	21.0%
Massage chair	16.9%	17.3%	16.7%
Home esthetic products	8.9%	3.1%	12.2%
None of the above	4.4%	5.1%	4.0%

Q3: When buying home electrical items, what do you refer to or where do you get information from? (Sample size=6,606, up to three answers)

	All	Male N=2,428	Female N=4,178
Shop	74.9%	66.8%	79.6%
Catalogues	54.5%	56.4%	53.4%
Television	37.1%	30.5%	41.0%
Magazines	24.4%	32.4%	19.7%
Word of mouth	16.6%	11.0%	19.9%
Maker’s web site	15.6%	20.0%	13.0%
Other PC internet site	10.8%	15.0%	8.4%
Newspapers	10.2%	10.7%	9.9%
Other mobile phone internet site	4.9%	6.2%	4.2%
Other	3.6%	2.9%	4.1%
Internet total	26.3%	33.6%	22.6%

I think it’s interesting to note that sources of information that are trying to sell you something, namely the shop, catalogues, and the maker’s web site, feature so highly in the rankings here.