世論 What Japan Thinks

Perhaps it’s just the types of web sites I frequent (Slashdot and digg, for instance), or perhaps it’s just that people are reluctant to admit to filesharing even semi-anonymously, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into movie watching showed P2P the second least-popular way for obtaining movies.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of May 2008 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

“Better than free” is the basic strategy pursued by many paid services that compete with pirated content. Apple’s iTunes, in particular, mostly achieves this goal, but other systems I have used, especially from large Japanese corporates, are nowhere near realising this. I’ve not personally used any of these mail-order DVD rental systems, as most of my film needs are met by either the cinema or stuff recorded off cable.

I’m not sure why video tape-only people were eliminated from Q2, and finding out the patterns of usage of tape and DVD (and hard disk, for that matter) would have been interesting. Perhaps if one pays to obtain the full results one can learn these details. I’m also a little surprised that Video On Demand and acTVila were not distinct answers for Q2.

Research results

Q1: Do you know about internet-based DVD rental services? (Sample size=1,087)

Yes	67.8%
Just heard of it	21.2%
No	11.0%

From the original sample, 52 people watch neither DVD nor video tapes, and 33 people watched only video tapes. The remaining 1,002 people (how many watched both media and how many just DVD is not recorded) were asked the following questions.

Q2: From where do you obtain pre-recorded movie contents that you watch at home? (Sample size=1,002, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Rental from rental shop	709	70.6%
Recorded television broadcasts	451	45.0%
Purchased from bricks and mortar shop	322	32.1%
Borrow, receive from friends	319	31.8%
Internet purchase	298	29.7%
Movie download site	275	27.4%
Taken by self, family	92	9.2%
Net rental (to SQ)	90	9.0%
Net auction	80	8.0%
File-sharing P2P software	47	4.7%
Other mail-order (from magazine, television ads, etc)	13	1.3%
Other	14	1.4%

The number using internet rental has grown four percentage points since last year.

Q2SQ: Which of the following internet rental services have you used? (Sample size=90, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Tsutaya DISCAS	72	80.0%
DMM.COM	27	30.0%
Posren	10	11.1%
GEOLAND	2	2.2%
Other	6	6.7%

In the other category there were five users of Rakuten Rental.

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