世論 What Japan Thinks

I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets email newsletters from various places that I just can’t unsubscribe from, and in Japan there seems to be no law or industry best practice to have a simple unsubscribe link even from reputable businesses, so this recent survey from iShare into unwanted email newsletters revealed how the average person copes with this situation.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 28th of September 2009 513 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.8% of the sample were male, 30.4% in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, and 36.3% in their forties.

My wife gets a shed-load of spam every day, especially from Rakuten (Japan’s largest online mall), who will sell on your address to their shops at the drop of a hat, so even if you unclick all the mail delivery boxes, you come back a day or two later and find that new boxes have appeared. I suspect in the small print when you buy something from one of their shops is some text saying that you agree to get email from other businesses from the same genre. She has mostly given up on unsubscribing, so she now has hundreds of addresses blocked in her mail client!
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A recent survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into the topic of web-based email amongst a young female demographic found almost a majority had a Yahoo! email account.

Demographics

On the 28th of September 2009 300 female members of the iBridge Research Plus monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 24.3% of the sample were in their twenties, 46.3% in their thirties, and 29.3% in their forties,

I did once try to recommend Gmail to my wife by sending her an invitation, but she never took me up, despite telling her about its excellent support for emoji!
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About the only proper punctuation mark I use in my mobile emails is a question mark, and this recent survey from Point On Research, as reported on by japan.internet.com, into mobile phone email found that I’m in the majority in my smiley habits.

Demographics

On the first of September 2009 exactly 800 members of the Point On Research monitor group completed a mobile phone-based private questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I don’t really use much decomail, not even the animated emoji, as my phone’s a bit old and the interface for accessing them is pretty awkward, so I stick with emoji most of the time.

Oh, and if you need some kaomoji for your phone or PC, please visit my huge collection of Japanese emoticons and smilies.
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One of the biggest differences in standard mobile phone usage between Japan and the West is that almost every phone here supports full internet email by default, with for at least the last three or four years support for HTML graphic email, and even now simple Flash authoring, and older handsets even have a fall-back mode to allow them to view graphic mail online. On the other hand, the West is still wedded to SMS. With that in mind, let’s have a look at a recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computer usage of mobile phone users.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 14th of July 2009 1,048 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample were female, 2.8% in their teens, 26.6% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 23.5% in their forties, and 5.8% aged fifty or older.

Note that to register as a goo Research monitor one must first sign up with a computer (or a mobile phone with a full browser), then join their mobile monitor group, so as can be seen below, all bar one percent of the sample also have a computer, which does bias the sample one way. However, most mobile-only surveys tend to bias the sample towards heavier mobile users, but even with this bias, the high number who treat their mobile phone as their main email tool is quite surprising to me.
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This recent survey from Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile spam found that almost half of all Japanese are getting multiple mobile spams per day.

Demographics

On the 21st of June 2009 800 members of the Point On Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fiftise.

Note that in May a similar survey found a smaller percentage of people getting mobile spam email, but goo Research’s panel is primarily PC internet-based, whereas this sample is for mobile users, who tend to be heavy users, thus more exposure to sites that might be inclined to spam.
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First, an apology for What Japan Thinks being down again earlier today. I’ve got something strange going on at my host.

Now, on to the survey; MyVoice took a look at email newsletter usage.

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2009 14,939 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I am probably signed up to about ten or so newsletters, but most of them I don’t look at. About the only one I really do pay attention to is from Flying Blue (KLM and Air France mileage card) as they quite often have decent promotional offers. My wife also forwards the Mister Donuts mail to me which usually has nice discount coupons.
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Recently goo Research conducted a survey into mobile phone users use of computers, with this report from japan.internet.com concentrating on email newsletters, or “Mail Magazines” as they are known as in Japanese English. This was the sixth time they’ve conducted this regular monthly survey, but the first time I’ve translated any from the series.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 13th of May 2009 1,066 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. 55.9% of the sample were female, 2.7% were in their teens, 26.7% in their twenties, 40.4% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forties, and 5.9% aged fifty or older.

Looking at the results, and trying to remember when I applied to be a goo Monitor, I believe that you must first apply to be a computer-based monitor, then add your mobile phone email account, so everyone in the survey should have access to a computer.

I get just the one newsletter on my mobile phone, which I really should cancel (in fact, I’ve just cancelled right now), but get too many on my PC, including one from DHC (a cosmetics company) thanks to my wife signing up with my address, who send me a mail every day, but although they include an unsubscribe link, you have to log into your account to confirm it, but my wife’s forgotton the password.
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This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile spam found that about one in four Japanese are getting multiple mobile spams per day.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 26th of April 2009 1,061 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I think I once got a mobile phone spam long, long ago, but as I rarely venture away from reputable company sites on my mobile, I don’t expose myself to any significant risks. How about you?

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This is not quite as entertaining a FAIL as yesterday’s post, but this report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus into electronic mail focused at failures in the office with BCC, Blind Carbon Copy.

Demographics

On the first of May 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private intenet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 13.0% in their twenties, 35.7% in their thirties, 39.7% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

I can’t recall ever making a mistake with BCC, a feature I rarely use anyway, but I have been on the receiving end of huge To lists that would have been better handled with BCC.

Now I look at the results, I don’t really know what they demonstrate…
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Why this survey focused only on the young woman demographic is a bit of mystery to me, but that’s what iBridge Research Plus did in this survey reported on by japan.internet.com into web email.

Demographics

On the 9th of March 2009 300 female members of the iBridge research monitor group completed an internet-based questionnaire. 21.3% of the sample were in their twenties, 46.3% in their thirties, and 32.3% in their forties.

With some of the services described below, the email address comes as part of a package – au one Mail is an external mailbox for mobile phones, and to create a livedoor blog you need to create a livedoor email address, a process I have done myself, but both the blog and mailbox lie unused.
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