By Ken Y-N ( May 1, 2009 at 23:48)
· Filed under Entertainment, Polls
Advertisement
Having wondered out loud in an entry a couple of days ago whether people fill their iPods from rental CDs, perhaps this survey from MyVoice into CD, DVD, book, comic, etc rental gives the answer.
Demographics
Over the first five days of April 2009 15,426 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.
Note than in the survey DVD would include Blu-Ray, I believe.
It’s interesting that over one in five has tried an online rental-by-mail system, and I also find it perhaps curious that none of the five named services have an obvious English-language (or other foreign languages) page – they stock a lot of English-language movies and there’s a reasonable number of us in far-flung corners of Japan who may be potential customers.
Research results
Q1: Have you ever used a rental shop for CD, DVD, video, other audio-visual products, books, comics, etc? (Sample size=15,426)
Q2: What kinds of items have you rented? (Sample size=rental shop users, multiple answer)
| CD |
82.4% |
| DVD |
79.7% |
| Video |
61.4% |
| Comic |
8.8% |
| Book |
2.5% |
| No answer |
0.2% |
Q3: About how often do you rent items? (Sample size=rental shop users)
| Twice a week or more |
1.0% |
| Once a week |
6.0% |
| Twice a month |
13.4% |
| Once a month |
18.7% |
| Several times a year |
30.4% |
| Less than that |
30.2% |
| No answer |
0.4% |
Q4: When do you use rental shops? (Sample size=rental shop users, multiple answer)
| When I have free time |
53.3% |
| When there’s contents I’m interested in, but not enough to buy |
51.6% |
| When I want to relax at home |
32.7% |
| When I want to watch, listen to contents I’ve seen, heard before |
26.2% |
| When new contents come out |
17.4% |
| When friends recommend contents |
9.3% |
| When I pass by the rental shop |
8.1% |
| When I don’t have the money to buy |
6.9% |
| Other |
8.8% |
| No answer |
0.2% |
Q5: From where do you get information to reference when deciding what to rent? (Sample size=rental shop users, multiple answer)
| Television program, advertisement |
44.0% |
| In-store product advertising |
25.0% |
| Friends, family discuss it |
23.9% |
| Magazine column, advertisement |
14.8% |
| Official web site of contents I’m interested in |
11.7% |
| Music, video playing in a shop |
11.2% |
| Newspaper column, advertisement |
9.3% |
| Portal site (Yahoo!, etc) feature |
8.7% |
| Official web site of artist I’m interested in |
7.9% |
| Blog, bulletin board, SNS |
6.2% |
| Email newsletter |
5.4% |
| YouTube, Nico Nico Douga, other video sharing site |
5.1% |
| Other web site |
4.8% |
| Radio program |
3.7% |
| Outdoor advertisement |
2.8% |
| Public transport advertisement |
2.5% |
| Web banner advertisement |
1.8% |
| Talking to sales staff |
0.5% |
| Other |
4.7% |
| Don’t reference any particular information |
23.3% |
| No answer |
0.2% |
Q6: Have you ever used an online rental system? (Sample size=15,426)
Read more on: cd,
dvd,
myvoice,
rental,
video
Permalink
Subscribe to feed
My wife and I do not live in some rural fringe area but when we tried DISCAS, the Tsutaya rent-by-mail service, and it was horribly slow. Returning discs took a solid week, as did receiving new ones. I can only imagine service would be slower to those living outside major metro areas.
I live an hour south of Tokyo on the coast next to Kamakura. When I send DVD’s back to discas, I generally get the next set of discs two days later. So, for example, Monday I send the discs. Tuesday they receive *and* send out the next shipment. Wednesday I have the next set. That is about as fast as I can imagine. It may take an extra day sometimes . . . I used to use posren, but I quit them several years ago. I don’t remember why. I think they eliminated some English / romaji searching ability. Tsutaya discas will let you search for actors and actresses and directors, I guess, by their names in romaji, but movie names have to be searched for in kana. Rakuten, dmm, and yahoo japan are all offering rental servies all about the same price point. This site has a little more info: http://www.rental-dvd.net