世論 What Japan Thinks

With the last posting day before New Year getting ever closer, this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into New Year postcards is a reminder to us all to get ours finished.

Demographics

Between the 29th of November and the 1st of December 2011 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I haven’t actually got round to even ordering my New Year postcards yet, and as I’ve been at our work Christmas end of year party tonight I’m in no fit state, so that’s another day closer to the deadline… Note, I’ve prepared this post ahead of time, so any mistakes are just the usual me, not the beer’s fault!

Research results

First, the whole sample was asked if they sent nengajo, New Year postcards, every year. 71.9% of the sample said they sent every year and 12.9% said they sent some years but not other years. The remaining 5.2% were split between those who stopped sending them, those who never sent any, and the just don’t knows, but no figure was presented for that.

Next, the survey gets a little confusing text-wise, so I hope the following data is correct!

The 919 who always or sometimes send New Year cards were asked if last year they used “Otoshidama” cards. These are official postcards from the Post Office with a printed-on stamp and a sequence number at the bottom that becomes an entry into a lottery drawn at the end of January – see here for the results of last New Year’s. So, 93.3% said that they had used them, so they were then asked if they had used the SNS mixi’s postcard intermediary service, as presumably mixi used Otoshidama cards. The question as worded asks if people have ever used mixi’s service, but the previous question selected only those who had sent a card last year.

Q1: Have you ever used mixi’s New Year postcard intermediary service? (Sample size=857)

Used it	2.6%
Not used it	96.6%
Forgot	0.8%