世論 What Japan Thinks

One of the strong images, or is it a stereotype, of Japanese businessmen, and one of the first points of etiquette many foreigners learn before coming to Japan, is the exchanging of business cards. To find out the truth behind this image, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into business card management tools.

Demographics

On the 23th of October 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the private or public sectors successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 82.2% of the sample was male, 11.8% were in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 35.6% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

This is one case where the makeup of the JR Tokai Express monitor pool may bias the results. As one of their main recruiting grounds is people riding the shinkansen, and replying to questionnaires awards points that can be exchanged for discounts on shinkansen tickets, they do attract frequent business travellers, and these travellers may be more likely to be sales people, thus more prone to be in situations where exchanging business cards is required.

Research results

First, of the original sample 284 people, or 85.8%, had business cards issued to them by their employer. These 284 were asked the following question.

Q1: Do you exchange business cards with contacts from outside of your organisation? (Sample size=284)

Often do so (to SQ1)	53.9%
Sometimes do so (to SQ1)	38.0%
Seldom do so	7.7%
No, never do	0.4%

Q1SQ1: About how many business cards do you exchange per month? (Sample size=261)

One to nine	52.1%
Ten to nineteen	22.2%
Twenty to twenty-nine	14.6%
Thirty to forty-nine	4.2%
Fifty to ninety-nine	4.6%
One hundred to 199	1.1%
Two hundred or more	0.0%
Don’t know	1.1%

Q1SQ2: How do you most often manage these cards? (Sample size=261)

Use a business card folder	69.3%
Just leave them unsorted in drawer, box, etc	23.8%
Use OCR or manual entry management tool	5.7%
Secretary, etc, manages them	0.8%
Other	0.4%