世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a great survey from goo Research into used, rental, and repaired goods and services.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 5th of May 2011 1,074 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were female, 20.1% in their twenties, 20.2% in their thirties, 20.1% in their forties, 19.6% in their fifties, and 19.9% aged sixty or older.

My wife won’t go near anything second-hand, and as for repairing in Japan, I feel unless I have a direct contact with a decent engineer, the average call-out charges or repair costs compare unfavourably with the cost of just buying a replacement item. We’ve had stuff repaired under guarantee – the last time was when our washing machine croaked and they gave us a brand-new latest model upgrade for nothing – but it feels like too much hassle to get older stuff looked at.
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With the airwaves being saturated recently with adverts for DMM.COM, the very high number of people aware of services like DMM.COM in this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into movie viewing is not surprising at all.

Demographics

On the 6th of May 2010 1,114 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 16.1% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Recently my movie watching at home has been pretty close to zero due to a lack of time – I’m thinking we should cancel our cable subscription and just watch all the stacked-up DVDs that have been building up over the last few years. On the other hand I do go to a real cinema around once a month.
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I have zero interest in brand bags, and fortunately my wife grew out of her habit long before we met, but looking at this recent survey from iShare into second-hand, pawned and rental brand bags I see there are still a lot of addicts out there!

Demographics

Between the 19th and 25th of November 2009 502 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 33.5% in their twenties, 33.5% in their thirties, and 33.1% in their forties.

It’s quite amazing to see that just about one third of the younger Japanese female population has bought a brand bag and another fifth have had one bought for them, but then again when out and about at the weekend it does seem like half the girls are carrying an LV tote…
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Having wondered out loud in an entry a couple of days ago whether people fill their iPods from rental CDs, perhaps this survey from MyVoice into CD, DVD, book, comic, etc rental gives the answer.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2009 15,426 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Note than in the survey DVD would include Blu-Ray, I believe.

It’s interesting that over one in five has tried an online rental-by-mail system, and I also find it perhaps curious that none of the five named services have an obvious English-language (or other foreign languages) page – they stock a lot of English-language movies and there’s a reasonable number of us in far-flung corners of Japan who may be potential customers.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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