DIMSDRIVE recently published the results of a survey into probably the biggest event in the school year (and a minor event in the company calendar), Sports Day. Over a week at the end of September and the start of October they interviewed 6,566 people from their internet monitor group. 60.1% were female, 1.1% in their teens, 16.4% in their twenties, 40.5% in their thirties, 30.6% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 2.9% aged sixty or older. Since this survey was mainly about their children’s sports day, the additional children-related data was 11.7% had infant-aged children, 13.6% had children in nursery or kindergarten, 9.7% in first or second year of primary (elementary) school (i.e. aged 6 or 7), 9.9% in third or fourth year primary education, 9.8% in fifth or sixth year, 12.9% in middle school, and 14.4% in high school or older. 46.5% had no children at all.
There is in fact a national holiday for sports event, 体育の日, taiiku no hi, Health Sports Day, usually the 10th of October (although this year it was on the 9th, for some reason), celebrating the day the 1964 Tokyo Olympics opened. I’ve once taken part in our company sports evening, which consisted of many childish games, beer, and cheap boxed lunches, all performed with the PA blaring out tunes like Colonel Bogie. Never again! Read the rest of this entry »
A little while back goo Ranking published the results of a poll into the top 30 new internet words. Many of these neologisms are unlikely to ever find their way into a dictionary, other than perhaps one of the Wiki family, of course. As usual for goo Ranking, the top vote gets 100 points, and all the rest get a value representing the percentage of votes relative to the number one choice.
As you might suspect, many of these words were coined on 2 Channel.
Central Research Services Inc recently reported on a survey into media consumption in 2005. The survey itself was conducted back in October 2005, and although detailed demographics are not available, the sample was randomly selected from residents up and down the country aged between 15 and 69, and conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. The response rate was 57.4%, giving a raw sample size of 3,443 people.
I don’t think this survey teaches us much that intuition suggests to be true, but it’s always interesting to get these hunches backed up by raw data. However, although almost three-quarters read a paper every day, how much they actually read versus just headline skimming is another question that hasn’t been asked here.
Q3 is a rather weird question – perhaps it’s to see if people start with the news or the sports. The tabloids have sports on the back page, but the broadsheets usually have the television listings, then the sports from the second-last page, so I don’t know how that affected the answers. Read the rest of this entry »
Lighting seems very high to me, and you’ll perhaps notice that washing machines is not noted: in Japan, most washers use cold, not hot water, so they need no heating element for water.
Continuing on from cheese, we now move to that most wonderful of Japanese sweeties, Pocky. Apparently the 11th of November is Pocky and Pretz (a savoury version of Pocky) Day, presumably as 11 11 looks like four Pocky sticks. I can guess that Pretz is so-called as it is perhaps reminiscent of a pretzel, but why Pocky?
As usual, no demographics, just the relative votes from a survey conducted towards the end of October. I like most of the Pocky advertisements, so I was rather pleased to find someone doing their own YouTube version of one of the current commercials.
In my never-ending quest to bring you the finest in studies of Japanese consumer habits, I present the latest goo Ranking survey on cheese for your edification. As usual for these rankings, the scoring is expressed as percentages; the finest fermented curd scores 100 points, and all other cheesy comestibles score according to the ratio of their votes to the number one.
Some trivia: apparently cheese (when first introduced to Japan anyway) smelt as bad to the Japanese as natto does to us Westerners. Most cheese sold in Japan is made in Japan, and whilst I can understand it in cheddar’s case, Hokkaido mozzarella still seems rather strange to me. The chance of any cheese purchased in Japanese tasting anything like Western-produced cheese is rather remote, bar the plastic processed cheese slices that are equally revolting the world over!
Over a week at the end of August and the start of September, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at movie theatre attendance. 5,180 member of their online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet survey. 43.1% were male, 1.2% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 34.8% in their thirties, 26.9% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or over.
In this half of the survey we see that not surprisingly people find the movies in Japan just a bit too expensive. I can understand that, as even when buying the advance tickets, 1,300 yen is a bit much to risk on a movie you may not know too well, and all but the biggest blockbusters are worth the full 1,800 yen price.
I’m not sure about the attending the movies by yourself. Is this frowned upon in Japan? Some sort of black mark on your character? Read the rest of this entry »
Over a week at the end of August and the start of September, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at movie theatre attendance. 5,180 member of their online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet survey. 43.1% were male, 1.2% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 34.8% in their thirties, 26.9% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or over.
I found the infrequency of cinema visits in Q1 rather surprising, with over two in five visiting once every sixth months or less and another one in five not having visited at all in recent years, but sadly there is no follow-up questions to find out why they don’t visit more often. Given that in Q4 46.0% use Ladies’ Day discounts (usually 1,000 yen instead of the standard 1,800 yen price), and since there were 56.9% female respondents, that means that just over four in five women use these discount. Since about half often buy popcorn and a drink, both of which have high markups, perhaps more Men’s Days or better still Couples Days would get more bums on seats and better profits. However, Q4SQ suggests that guaranteeing a seat ahead of time is a key requirement, but one usually cannot reserve seats at Ladies’ Day prices, so perhaps allowing reservations on these days is a way forward. However, if people turn up at the cinema and find no seats leftfor their favourite film, they may often choose another one since they’ve come all the way to the cinema, so if seat availability could be checked from home they’d actually have less custom. Read the rest of this entry »
NEPRO Japan recently conducted a survey into people’s views on children carrying mobile phones. Over one day at the start of October they gathered 3,716 valid responses by means of a self-selecting public survey available through the menuing system of all three major mobile phone carriers, namely DoCoMo’s iMode, au’s EZweb, and Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai. Demographically, the respondents were 59% female, 2% in their teens, 36% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty or older.
Q4 is an interesting question. As far as I know, in the UK there are a lot of rules regarding the provision of facilities for the blocking of content that mobile phones can access, but I have never heard of such a facility in Japan. The worry about running up big bills is a bit unnecessary, however, as all mobile providers have plans that can cap usage at specific costs. Going shopping online seems another strange worry, but perhaps it also means signing up for too many services with monthly fees? Read the rest of this entry »
With MNP, Mobile Number Portability, having just started in Japan, japan.internet.com reported that JR Tokai Express Research performed a survey into people’s views on MNP. They interviewed just 330 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.3% of the sample was male, 33.3% female, so where that places the remaining one person, I don’t know! 17.3% were in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.
The sample size for Q1SQ is very small, so it is difficult to extrapolate these figures, but it does seem that DoCoMo is the biggest loser and au the biggest winner. This backs up unofficial figures I heard of about 400,000 net loss to DoCoMo, 600,000 gain for au, and 200,000 less customers at Softbank, despite their suicidal price slashing. UPDATE: I was out by a factor of ten or so! This morning’s TV (recalling from memory, so the figures might not be 100% accurate!) said that au gained a net 103,000 customers, DoCoMo lost 75,000, and Softbank 23,000 over the last week. The figures don’t add up because there are also brand new customers included in the overall totals, I believe, and each company perhaps uses different counting methods.
For me, I had enough problem working out how to use my new phone from the same maker and service provider, so I’d be put off taking advantage of MNP and having to learn a whole new service model too! Read the rest of this entry »
[
Central Research Services Inc recently reported on a survey into 
[
[
NEPRO Japan recently conducted a survey into people’s views on 
With MNP, Mobile Number Portability, having just started in Japan, japan.internet.com reported that JR Tokai Express Research performed a survey into people’s 
Subscribe to feed