世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently released the results of a survey they conducted into the use of convenience stores. Over one week spanning the end of February and the start of March 5,305 users of DoCoMo’s iMode system chose to fill in a questionaire. 34.8% of the sample was male, 65.2% female.

I actually use them fairly infrequently, probably less than once a week, and most often it is to pay bills (you all do know you can pay most if not all utility bills at the major chains, with no extra fee charged?) or pay for tickets ordered online. If I do buy something, it’s more often than not just some bottled water, usually the cheapest in the store.
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

As a sort-of follow-up to yesterday’s survey on holidays involving overnight stays, this time we’ll look at a survey by infoPLANT into both overnight and day return trips. The fieldwork was carried out over a period of six days in the middle of January. Note that the full paid-for survey contains many more questions.

Demographics

1,500 members of the infoPLANT questionnaire panel responded to the survey. The sample was balanced 50:50 male and female in each age group, and exactly 20% in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties or older.

I’m surprised (actually, I’m not surprised, really) by the top holiday information source being television travel programs. I remember back in the UK the travel programs would have the staff joining a standard tour, sometimes with family, often staying in middle-of-the-road hotels, and participating in the usual activities that the average holidaymaker might take part in, resulting in a review that I personally could trust; here in Japan the traveller gets the best room, professionaly lit to highlight everything, eat off the top of the menu with the chef or owner hovering over the table, and get the one-on-one guided tour of the sites, declaring everything to be absolutely wonderful, including, no doubt, the brown envelopes filled with unmarked bills from the featured businesses. I know of no travel shows that make any attempt to appear genuine.
Read the rest of this entry »

In January infoPLANT published the results of research conducted over three days in the middle of December into the topic of mobile phone electronic wallets (Osaifu keitai). They interviewed 1,500 mobile phone users from their monitor panel; the split was 50:50 male and female, and 750 people aged from 15 to 29, and 750 aged from 30 to 59. In addition, 500 people were DoCoMo users, 500 au, and 500 SoftBank. The full report looks at many aspects of mobile phone usage, but this article just covers the highlights presented in their summary.

I’ve never owned a phone with the required electronic wallet IC chip inside, and just last week when my wife upgraded to a new phone with the required electronics, she only agreed to have the functionality enabled as we got an extra 1,000 yen discount for doing so!

I’ve never actually seen anyone use their mobile phone’s electronic wallet features – it might be interesting to ask how many people just use them once or twice, then give up and go back to another method.

It’s interesting to note in Q4 that over a third have no interest in any electronic wallet features.
Read the rest of this entry »

With horizontal rain hammering on the window right now, it may seem rather unseasonal to look at a recent survey published by infoPLANT on the subject of ice cream, but the market even in the off season for ice cream seems rather strong. Over a week in the middle of January 8,653 people, 66.6% female, self-selected themselves to complete a survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode.

I eat ice cream perhaps two or three times a month, but most of that is either as a fixed dessert item on a dinner menu, or as a small scoop accompanying a slice of cake. During the summer, once every few weeks we’ll buy a cone, and when we go to the theatre we usually buy a single-serving cup during the interval, but that’s about it.

And what is the correct English term for a single-serving cup/mini-pot of ice cream? Cup ice cream sounds awfully like a Japanese-invented term. You know you’ve been in Japan too long when you forget British-English and can only remember Japanese-English!
Read the rest of this entry »

infoPLANT recently published the results of a survey they conducted into the consumption of soft drinks. Over a week towards the end of December last year 5,933 people chose to complete a survey promoted in the NTT DoCoMo iMode menuing system. The basic demographics were 37.5% male and 62.5% female.

It might be interesting to cross-reference these results with one earlier this month into water consumption and last year’s look at can coffee consumption. As well as the water mentioned previously, I’m a Diet Coke fan and also like soba tea and 爽建美茶, soukenbicha, a lovely blend of various grasses and teas. Although I’m a regular black tea drinker at home, I don’t touch bottled tea as it’s usually undrinkably sugar-laden, as is much of the canned coffee. Black coffees are straight, but I can’t cope with the bitterness, so I stick with the 微糖, bitou, slightly sugared, which are usually paletable. I don’t actually buy them myself, but we have a monthly workplace casual meeting where the company provides soft drinks and nibbles.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over one week in the middle of December infoPLANT gathered responses to a survey on baseball. 5,272 people, 57.4% female, successfully completed a self-selecting survey through DoCoMo’s mobile phone iMode menuing system.

In Q2, almost a quarter of all men and a sixth of all women questioned said they attended a professional baseball match at a stadium last year, a figure I find a little hard to believe, quite frankly, making me suspect there might have been a lot of self-selecting bias going on. I shall have to investigate other surveys to see how the numbers compare.

In Q3, not surprisingly the team most people saw was the season’s champions, Nippon Ham Fighters, but perhaps surprisingly they were the only team with more female than male viewers, no doubt helped in part by the biggest Ham of them all.
Read the rest of this entry »

With the New Year soon to be upon us, infoPLANT took a look at the subject of drinking during the end of the year holidays. The data provided below is part of a 15 question survey available for purchase from their web site. For the survey, 800 internet users completed a web-based survey over the first two days in December. The sample was equally split 50:50 male and female, and 25:25:25:25 in each age group from the twenties to the fifties and older.

This promised to be an interesting survey, but turned out to be rather dull once I started translating it. Might as well post it, however, but aplogies in advance!
Read the rest of this entry »

infoPLANT recently performed a survey into the consumption of news. Over a week at the end of October 5,973 people, 62.1% female, chose to complete the public survey available through iMode.

Although infoPLANT used its usual method of collecting self-selecting respondents through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menu system, thus resulting in a bias towards those who are heavy users of mobile phone, the data forms an interesting point of comparision to a recent translation of a more balanced survey of the news consumption habits of the average person. We cqan immediately see from the pie charts that there are a quarter less daily paper reader amongst the mobile phoners, but even though there are presumably a lot of heavy users in this sample, newspapers still outdo all internet-based web services put together.

The survey also looks at iChannel, a new non-free but low cost service from DoCoMo that pushes headlines to mobile phones. I tried out a free preview of it but it seemed rather ordinary, and being a stingey git, paying a couple of hundred yen per month was just a bit too much for me!
Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, infoPLANT, in conjunction with C-NEWS, released the results of a closed internet survey into the consumption of supplements. Over two days at the very end of October they interviewed 1,500 people, 750 male and 750 female, and 300 in each of the age groups from the twenties to the sixties and older. This 50:50 sex split was present in each of the age groups too.

A little anecdote – a friend of mine had his blood lipid (cholesterol) level recorded as just over the safe limits (although Japanese safe levels are lower than Western levels, apparently) and all he did way take two Nature Made fish oil capsules a day, still maintaining the same diet otherwise, and after six months his levels had dropped 10% back into the safe zone.
Read the rest of this entry »