世論 What Japan Thinks

In Japan, there’s always some brand or other of soft drink in particular that has a free collectable gift attached to it, such as figurines, mobile phone straps, or even once plant seeds! These food items collectable gifts were the focus of a recent survey from iShare. Oh, a long time ago I did a similar DIMSDRIVE survey.

Demographics

Between the 30th of October and the 5ht of November 2009 537 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.5% of the sample were male, 35.8% in their twenties, 30.5% in their thirties, and 33.7% in their forties.

The last nice collectable set I got was Snoopy lying on various delicacies from around the country, given away free with Pepsi. I’ve never gone out of my way to collect such items, but they do influence my wife’s buying habits to some degree.

A friend of mine once bought a whole case of collectable cards that came with a tiny sweet, so it looked more to me like buying a card that came with a free ebidle item, not the other way round!

Research results

Q1: Since becoming an adult, have you ever bought a food item with an obviously-attached free gift? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=309	Female N=228
Yes (to SQs)	45.4%	40.5%	52.2%
No	54.6%	59.5%	47.8%

Q1SQ1: How often do you buy food items with free gifts? (Sample size=244)

	All	Male N=125	Female N=119
Frequently buy	4.9%	4.8%	5.0%
Not frequently, but do buy	59.8%	52.8%	67.2%
Almost never buy them	35.2%	42.4%	27.7%

Q1SQ2: Where do you buy food items with free gifts? (Sample size=244, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=125	Female N=119
Convenience store	81.1%	84.8%	77.3%
Supermarket	49.2%	39.2%	59.7%
Toy shop	11.9%	12.8%	10.9%
Specialist food free gift store	5.7%	6.4%	5.0%
Direct from free gift maker’s web site	4.9%	5.6%	4.2%
Specialist free gift online store	4.5%	4.0%	5.0%
Other	2.9%	1.6%	4.2%

Q1SQ3: What kinds of free gifts have you got? (Sample size=244, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=125	Female N=119
Figurines	68.9%	64.8%	73.1%
Mobile phone strap	44.7%	35.2%	54.6%
Bottle cap	28.7%	31.2%	26.1%
Key ring	19.7%	13.6%	26.1%
Trading card	14.8%	16.8%	12.6%
Plastic model	14.3%	21.6%	6.7%
Sticker	12.3%	10.4%	14.3%
CD, DVD	9.4%	8.8%	10.1%
Other	7.0%	5.6%	8.4%

Q1SQ4: When buying food items with free gifts, about how many do you buy at once? (Sample size=244)

	All	Male N=125	Female N=119
One	50.8%	50.4%	51.3%
Two or three	37.3%	36.8%	37.8%
Four or five	4.1%	3.2%	5.0%
Six or more	7.8%	9.6%	5.9%

Q1SQ5: Have you ever had a problem with where to store your free gift collections? (Sample size=244)

	All	Male N=125	Female N=119
Yes	38.9%	36.0%	42.0%
No	61.1%	64.0%	58.0%

Q2: Are you the obsessive sort? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=309	Female N=228
Completely obsessive	14.9%	16.2%	13.2%
Somewhat obsessive	48.2%	47.2%	49.6%
Somewhat fickle	28.3%	25.9%	31.6%
Completely fickle	8.6%	10.7%	5.7%

Not surprisingly, the more fickle one was, the less frequent one bought free gifts.