世論 What Japan Thinks

Chavs are a UK phenomenon; youths of ill-repute, often football hooligans, who were (and might still be) wont to dress in designer brands, with Burberry, and in particular Burberry baseball caps, being the item of choice. A recent survey conducted by MyVoice into high-class brands found that Burberry was also the most owned high-class brand in Japan.

Demographics

Over the first five days of December 2007 14,452 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

I don’t think I own any posh brand items and I think they are all a rip-off anyway! I do snigger, however, whenever I see Dunhill branded items, in particular fragrances, as for me they are forever associated with cigarettes. However, given Japanese male’s love affair with smoking, I suppose that’s a plus in Japan.

The photographed Chav-mobile is from Starphuk on flickr.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

Read more on: brand,myvoice

Even though shops like Oxfam dress many UK students, charity shops as we might know them in the west basically do not exist in Japan, for various reasons that would be interesting to see investigated through a survey. Indeed, perhaps the full version of this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into used clothes covered that issue, although the highlights below do not.

Demographics

On the 20th of November 2007 334 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.3% of the sample was male, 4.8% in their teens, 16.5% in their twenties, 37.4% in their thirties, 24.3% in their forties, 8.7% in their fities, 7.5% in their sixties, and for the first time ever for a JR Tokai Express Research poll, 0.9% (or three people) were specifically identified as being aged seventy or older.

I’m not sure how the first answer in Q1SQ2 should be read; is this referring to buying pre-worn jeans or the like, or choosing used for everyday wear as one cannot afford new. I’d also like to see cross-referencings between where purchased and why purchased, and also what sorts of clothes. I can image little stigma being attached to picking up a second-hand kimono, but a box of everyday clothes from a fleamarket is a very different kind of purchase.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on: brand,clothes,jr tokai express research

infoPLANT recently took a look at one of the first things that strikes many visitors to these shores, the interest in and habits surrounding high-class brand-name clothes, accessories and jewelry. Although this research was conducted by infoPLANT’s usual method of a self-selecting call for participants sent out through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system, the self-selecting nature should not have too averse an effect on the replies, I believe.

Demographics

Over a week between the 20th and 27th of February, 4,989 mobile phone users successfully completed the survey. 34.9% of the group was male, 2.8% were in their teens, 32.8% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 18.3% in their forties, and 2.9% aged fifty or older.

I don’t think I’ve actually ever bought a posh brand item myself, and the only interest I have in them is ensuring I drag wifey away as quickly as possible whenever she sets her eyes upon them! She used to be quite a bit of a brand freak, but she’s mostly recovered now! As I’ve got small wrists, I can’t even wear the average posh watch without it looking far too chunky, not that I’d want to anyway, as Rolex wearers always gives me the impression of being dodgy second-hand car salesmen.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on: brand,infoplant,shopping

japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into what brands people associate with internet services. Over three days at the start of February 1,083 people from their monitor group successfully completed a private online questionnaire. The male-female split was half-and-half to three significant digits; there was one more male than female respondent. 13.5% were in their teens, 11.5% in their twenties, 14.9% in their thirties, 18.2% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 22.0% in their sixties.

On a statistical note, recently goo Research’s samples seem to be more balanced both sex and age-wise; they used to be around 55:45 male to female and biased towards the thirties age group, but this is the second time recently I’ve noticed a more balanced age spread.

I reported on a similar survey conducted this time last year, so it may be instructive to cross-reference. Google has surpassed Yahoo! for search; this trend is also visible, but not so strongly, in actual search engine use. Regarding shopping, Rakuten Marketplace retains their huge lead over Amazon, perhaps due in part to their bordering-on-spam use (abuse!) that they make of your mail address, one reason I will never shop there. They do not have a one-click unsubscribe option, and they freely share your mail address between all the shops there. Even if you just use the Y-Not! free email greeting card service that they bought out last year, they automatically subscribe you to their system and pass the address on to their shops. You have been warned!
Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on: brand,goo research,google,Internet,rakuten,youtube

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, carried out another of their short surveys, this time regarding what first sprung to mind when thinking about web services. They interviewed 1,036 people, 57.9% female, by means of an internet questionnaire. 2.7% of the respondents were teenagers, 23.0% were in their twenties, 42.3% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 2.0% in their sixties.

Whereas an earlier survey looked at primarily how brand image is conveyed via advertising, these web services are perhaps not sold as heavily through conventional advertising channels, but instead make their mark by some combination of word of mouth, familiarity and accessibility.

The mere one percent naming Gmail as the first mail provider to come to mind seems very surprising to me, although I wonder if Google has been targetting that service towards the English-speaking demographic at the expensive of foreign language speakers? How does the Gmail brand image rank in other countries, including at home in the USA? Does anyone know?

One nice thing, however, about Gmail being below the Japanese radar is that our office’s firewall does not block it (yet…), unlike Hotmail, Yahoo! web mail (Japan but not the UK) and the other big providers. Not that I check personal mail at work; no no no, not me at all.

In addition, Gmail is still invitation-only, but that hasn’t stopped SNS services spreading widely amongst the Japanese. By the way, if anyone out there would like a Gmail invitation, I have lots to give away!
Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on: brand,goo research,Internet

japan.internet.com and goo Research recently performed a survey to see what brands sprung to mind when various products were mentioned. They questioned 1,084 people from goo’s pool of monitors, 42.53% male, 57.47% female, with 66.14% aged from 10 (well, it’s actually from 15, as that’s the minimum age for joining the goo Research monitor group) to 39, and 33.86% aged from 40 to 69.

As a slight digression, the original story did have these percentages to two decimal places, which seems an unnecessarily high degree of accuracy. Since the sample size is 1,084 people, one person equates to just over 0.09% of the sample, therefore quoting the percentages to two decimal places implies more accuracy than is possible from the sample size.

As a second slight digression, I’ve been a bit disappointed by goo Research recently - their main research results index now mostly points to japan.internet.com stories which only report a handful of the highlights from their survey, rather than the full gory details. Perhaps for you as a reader the short sharp story is easier to digest, but for me, often the juicer statistics are glossed over.

Note that this questionnaire is related to brand awareness, not actual sales figures, which often differ quite greatly from the numbers presented below; Matsushita/Viera is number one in terms of sales of flat screen TVs in Japan, USA and Europe, for instance.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on: brand,digital camera,goo research,portable audio,portable games,television