世論 What Japan Thinks

The slightly mysterious title for this post introduces a short survey from iShare that looks at shoe purchase and disposal.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 23rd of June 2009 566 mobile phone-owning members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire, 53.5% of the sample were male, 37.6% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 32.0% in their forties.

I most often buy my shoes from 歩人館, hojinkan, a national chain of shoe shops that deals only in ASICS shoes. The designs are sensible rather than trendy, but the shoes are good and solid and last a long time.

Research results

Q1: When choosing footwear, which of the following are important? (Sample size=566, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=263
Feel when wearing	76.9%	70.0%	84.8%
Price	69.8%	66.3%	73.8%
Design	67.0%	59.1%	76.0%
Easy to walk in	59.5%	51.8%	68.4%
Goes with clothes I have	24.0%	14.9%	34.6%
Material	21.4%	17.8%	25.5%
Heel height	19.6%	1.3%	40.7%
Other	2.1%	2.6%	1.5%

Q2: Where do you most often buy footwear? (Sample size=566)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=263
Shoe shop (multiple brands)	69.8%	71.0%	68.4%
Shoe shop (single brand)	11.5%	11.6%	11.4%
Clothes, accessory shop	8.5%	7.9%	9.1%
Internet shop	6.2%	5.9%	6.5%
Mail order	0.9%	0.0%	1.9%
Other	3.2%	3.6%	2.7%

Q3: How long do you keep wearing an item of footwear? (Until you get rid of them by throwing away, selling, or passing to someone) (Sample size=566)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=263
Until they get tatty	50.7%	50.8%	50.6%
Until they fall apart	23.7%	26.1%	20.9%
Until I get bored with them	11.8%	8.3%	16.0%
Until I buy the next pair	9.4%	11.2%	7.2%
Until the design goes out of fashion	1.4%	0.7%	2.3%
Don’t get rid of them	3.0%	3.0%	3.0%

Q4: What do you most often do with your old footwear? (Sample size=566)

	All	Male N=303	Female N=263
Throw them away	94.9%	94.7%	95.1%
Sell them	1.1%	0.7%	1.5%
Give them away	1.1%	1.7%	0.4%
Keep them	3.0%	3.0%	3.0%