世論 What Japan Thinks

First, a quick apology for no post yesterday, but I was in transit and away from a free internet connection, and on top of that the site seemed to have crashed… Hopefully I can post to my usual schedule for the rest of the week.

Since I didn’t have a decent internet connection, this is a survey from a couple of weeks ago conducted by the Nippon Research Council into olympic sponsorship and olympic viewing intentions.

Demographics

Between the 30th of May and the 4th of June 2008 1,200 members of the NRC monitor panel resident in the Tokyo city area (Tokyo city, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa) and the Keihanshin area of Kansai (Kyoto city, Osaka city and Hyogo) completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Sex and age breakdown was not noted.

Note that Panasonic and National are both brands of Matsushita Electric Industrial, but at the AGM of shareholders on Friday the 20th of June 2008 the board got a motion officially approved to change the company name to Panasonic and to kill off the National brand (used mostly for domestic appliances and other white goods), unifying everything worldwide under the Panasonic banner.

It’s all a bit depressing that the two best-known sponsors are suppliers of highly-sugared empty calories and fat-laden burgers, hardly the image of the ultimate in human physical achievement.

Research results

Q1: Which of the following companies are you aware of being an olympic sponsor or partner? (Sample size=1,200, multiple answer)

Coca-cola	41.9%
McDonalds	33.4%
Mizuno	28.2%
Toyota	23.1%
Panasonic	23.0%
Asics	19.2%
Nissin Foods	17.8%
VISA	15.7%
Kirin	15.7%
National	11.8%
JAL	11.1%
ANA	10.8%
DESCENTE	9.9%
NTT DoCoMo	9.1%
Yahoo! Japan	8.6%
Samsung	7.3%
Lotte	7.3%
Konami	6.6%
Omega	5.4%
Yomiuri Shimbun	5.4%
Aji no Moto	5.3%

The same question was asked a month earlier, and the biggest increase in awareness was with Mizuno, mainly due to, I suspect, their inability to design a swimsuit to challenge Speedo.

Q2: How did you become aware of these sponsors? (Sample size=those aware of sponsors, multiple answer)

Television advertisement	52.7%
Television programme	40.1%
Internet	21.7%
Newspaper article	13.0%
Newspaper advertisement	12.0%
Magazine advertisement	5.9%
In-train advertisement	5.2%
Magazine article	4.8%
Word of mouth	4.7%
Station advertisement	3.4%
Radio programme	1.4%
Advertisement folded-in with newspaper	1.4%
Radio advertisement	1.0%

Q3: How do you plan to watch the olympics? (Sample size=1,200, multiple answer)

Watch live at home	61.1%
Watch recorded at home	18.8%
Watch live on One Seg on mobile phone	3.1%
Watch live at school, work	2.4%
Visit Beijing in person	1.3%
Watch in car on car navigation system	0.7%
Watch recorded on mobile phone	0.3%
Watch on portable games machine	0.1%

The “not watch at all” percentage is not noted.

Q4: Which events do you want to watch? (Sample size=1,200, multiple answer, top ten only)

Rank	Event	Percentage
1	Swimming	26.9%
2	Marathon	24.3%
3	Judo	15.8%
4	Baseball	14.8%
5	Football	11.4%
6	Opening ceremony	8.8%
7	Athletics	8.6%
8	Gymnastics	6.3%
9	Volleyball	2.8%
10	Closing ceremony	2.1%