世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s been a while since I’ve posted the results of a survey on QR Codes (these two-dimensional bar code things) but this one from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com is worth the wait.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 24th of January 2010 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 2.7% in their teens, 17.3% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

A number of PC internet-targetted services – Yahoo! Maps springs to mind, and I think I’ve seen them for hotel bookings – display a QR Code that contains a URL that summarises the data on display in a mobile-friendly format. They also offer an option to email the URL to a mobile, but perhaps people worry about submitting their mobile email address and ending up being a spam target.

My two “Other” places for reading a QR Code was from a friend’s corporate PC inventory tag and from my health insurance card, just to see what information was encoded in both places.

Research results

Q1: Does your mobile phone have a QR Code reader function? (Sample size=300)

Yes (to SQ1)	76.0%
No	7.7%
Don’t know, don’t remember	14.0%
Don’t have a mobile phone	2.3%

Last time the survey was conducted, the don’t know and can’t remember category was just 9.0%, suggesting a degree of losing interest in in these codes.

Q1SQ1: Have you ever used your mobile phone’s QR Code reader function? (Sample size=228)

Yes (to SQ2)	87.3%
No	11.4%
Don’t remember	0.4%
Don’t know what a QR Code is	0.9%

Q1SQ2: From where have you read a QR Code? (Sample size=199)

	Votes	Percentage
Computer screen	126	63.3%
Advertising leaflet	111	55.8%
Newspaper, magazine	94	47.2%
Product label, packaging	92	46.2%
Poster	64	32.1%
Computer printout	43	21.6%
Business card	21	10.6%
Mobile phone screen	11	5.5%
Vending machine	9	4.5%
Other	0	0.0%