世論 What Japan Thinks

I haven’t been to karaoke for a number of years, not least due to being so tone deaf that not even the fanciest of karaoke electronic trickery can fix my singing voice. Perhaps some of my readers have, so if so you might recognise the topic of this survey reported by japan.internet.com and performed by Cross Marketing Inc into communication on the internet, with this article focusing in particular on karaoke.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of November 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing’s monitor group successfully completed an internet-based private questionnaire. Each age group was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

Apparently the end of the year is one of the busy times for karaoke boxes, because when work end-of-year parties finish and talk starts on the subject of the “second party”, the karaoke box is often a popular place to continue drinking. The article also notes a recently-coined word, ヒトカラ, hitokara, or going to karaoke by oneself.

I find it interesting that in Q1 only 2 out of 300 have never ever been to karaoke.

Research results

Q1: Which points affect your choice of karaoke box to visit? (Sample size=300, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Easy to get to	140	46.7%
Price	113	37.7%
Atmosphere	55	18.3%
Cleanliness	54	18.0%
Not full	47	15.7%
Tasty food or drink	41	13.7%
Has functionality I like	32	10.7%
Shop assistant manner	29	9.7%
Music	28	9.3%
Other	5	1.7%
Never been to karaoke	2	0.7%

From the original sample, the 177 people, or 59.0%, who had been to a karaoke box within the last year were asked the following question.

Q2: Do you know the Social Networking Service “Utasuki” from JOY SOUND? (Sample size=177)

Have used it	7.3%
Not used it, but know about it	13.0%
Just heard the name	17.5%
Never heard of it	62.1%

Apparently, with Utasuki (which translates to approximately Song-love) using your mobile phone you can log into the SNS from the karaoke box and do things like compare ratings of songs, get recommendations of others, download your song selection history to your PC, and of course do all the usual community messaging stuff too.

Q3: Looking at the above feature list, would you like to use or continue to use Utasuki? (Sample size=177)

Definitely want to use	7.3%
Want to use if I have the chance	32.8%
Can’t say either way	33.9%
Don’t particularly want to use it	26.0%