世論 What Japan Thinks

Although almost all mobile phones can connect to the internet, and although most, if not all, providers offer free contract maintenance pages accessible directly from one’s mobile, the traditional offline methods are still most used, according to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com on mobile phone use.

Demographics

Between the 30th of October and the 2nd of November 2008 1,091 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.8% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.6% aged sixty or older.

I’ve recently started using docomo’s my docomo site (no English version) for almost daily bill checking now, as I’m trying to find out if their pake-hodai double plan is actually cheaper for me, as I suspect it isn’t as I use barely 1,000 yen’s worth of packets, but as part of my basic plan I get 1,000 yen’s worth of free packets, so I think I’d have to double my usage to get my money’s worth. I’ll know at the end of the month.

I also used docomo’s billing plan diagnostic service, but it was a really unfriendly service and did not link directly to my own bill, so rather than it using my last six months-worth of data, for instance, I had to retype all the data, and because it was done as some sort of AJAX/Flash hack, the browser back button didn’t work so I couldn’t easily try out different scenarios. Checking it again today it won’t let me use Opera 9.6 even though it says only Opera 8.5 and below are not good enough, and it recommends the just far too buggy Internet Explorer 6.0 instead.

Research results

From the original sample 1,016 people, or 93.1% had mobile phones. Of these people, 75.3% had changed their mobile phone plan or changed or added other associated services. These 765 were asked the following.

Q1: How did you change, add to your mobile plan, services? (Sample size=765, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
At provider’s shop counter	474	62.0%
At provider’s web page from mobile phone	252	32.9%
At provider’s web page from computer	190	28.4%
At provider’s telephone support line	101	13.2%
Don’t know	2	0.3%

Q2: Have you used your mobile phone service provider’s billing diagnostic service to determine what services to change, add? (Sample size=765)

Have used	40.4%
Haven’t used	42.5%
Didn’t know there was such a service	11.9%
Can’t remember	5.2%

Other than from such diagnostic web site, 55.3% got information from the service provider’s web site, 38.7% from mobile phone shop staff, and 35.4% from the provider’s catalogue.

The next question was asked of all 1,016 mobile phone users.

Q3: How do you check your detailed usage charges? (Sample size=1,016, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Statement by post	631	62.1%
View statement on provider’s web site	300	29.5%
Statement by email	135	13.3%
Other	14	1.4%
Don’t know	19	1.9%

In addition, 59.6% knew that one could get a discount by cancelling the postal delivery of the bill, but as can be seen, not many are taking advantage of such a service.