Trend of on-line shopping in Japan
This information is from Nikkei Multimedia.
The following are the results of a survey of Japanese Internet users conducted in June 1998.
Search engines the Japanese Internet users usually use
| Answer | June 1998 | December 1997 | |
| Yahoo! Japan | 2586 | 46.74% | 50.82% |
| goo | 1459 | 26.37% | 21.65% |
| Infoseek Japan | 889 | 16.07% | 14.76% |
| NTT DIRECTORY | 128 | 2.31% | 3.66% |
| Acara NAVI | 96 | 1.74% | 1.95% |
| AltaVista | 75 | 1.36% | 2.00% |
| Excite Japan | 71 | 1.28% | 0.23% |
| CSJ Index | 48 | 0.87% | 1.11% |
| InfoNavigator | 46 | 0.83% | 0.40% |
| Netplaza | 25 | 0.45% | 0.45% |
| Hole-in-ONE | 23 | 0.42% | 0.67% |
| DRAGON | 6 | 0.11% | 0.17% |
| Lycos | 6 | 0.11% | 0.21% |
| OpenText Japan | 6 | 0.11% | 0.29% |
| HotBot | 5 | 0.09% | 0.04% |
| other | 64 | 1.16% | 1.45% |
Comments
As the survey indicates, Yahoo! Japan is most popular. However, it also indicates that there are users who prefer other search engines to Yahoo! Japan. Like American Internet users do, they also switch from one search engine to another to find the exact information they are looking for.
Products the Japanese Internet users purchased on-line
| Answer | June 1998 | December 1997 | June 1997 | |
| Books / Magazines | 591 | 22.84% | 15.01% | 17.87% |
| Computer | 567 | 21.91% | 18.46% | 16.68% |
| Food | 226 | 8.73% | 10.07% | 10.73% |
| Software (purchased and mailed) | 207 | 8.00% | 12.12% | 11.41% |
| bc / Game software | 181 | 6.99% | 4.85% | 4.28% |
| Software (purchased and downloaded) | 174 | 6.72% | 10.44% | 9.34% |
| clothing | 108 | 4.17% | 4.43% | 5.50% |
| Household items (furniture, curtain, umbrella, kitchen items, sundriesj |
90 | 3.48% | 4.71% | \\ |
| Airplane ticket / Train ticket / Reservation for hotel | 80 | 3.09% | \\ | \\ |
| Content service (news, match making service) | 56 | 2.16% | 3.17% | 2.21% |
| Plants | 48 | 1.85% | \\ | \\ |
| Electronics | 41 | 1.58% | 1.63% | \\ |
| Fitness machines / Health food | 39 | 1.51% | 1.91% | \\ |
| Digital data (documents, MIDI data, graphic dataj |
31 | 1.20% | 2.80% | 9.41% |
| Ticket for various events | 20 | 0.77% | 2.57% | \\ |
| Accessories | 10 | 0.39% | 0.37% | \\ |
| Local specialties (exclude food) | 4 | 0.15% | 0.98% | 1.09% |
| Car | 1 | 0.04% | \\ | \\ |
| Other | 114 | 4.40% | 6.48% | 11.48% |
Comment
As you can see, the Japanese on line shoppers buy more expensive products on line now. They feel more comfortable to shop on line now and have started purchasing various products.
How much the Japanese online shoppers spend
($1= 137 yen)
| Answer | June 1998 | December 1997 | December 1997 | June 1997 | |
| Less than 1000 yen ( | 58 | 2.24% | 1.88% | 1.80% | |
| 1000 yen - 5000 yen | 857 | 33.17% | 33.72% | 31.93% | |
| 5000 yen 10,000 yen | 729 | 28.21% | 27.19% | 31.56% | |
| 10,000 yen - 20,000 yen | 355 | 13.74% | 16.56% | 18.10% | |
| 20,000 yen - 50,000 yen | 252 | 9.75% | 9.97% | 9.88% | |
| 50.000 yen - 100,000 yen | 85 | 3.29% | 5.46% | More than 50,000 yen 6.73% |
|
| 100,000 yen - 200,000 | 60 | 2.32% | 2.07% | ||
| More than 200,000 yen | 188 | 7.28% | 3.15% | ||
Comments
Compared to last two surveys, the Japanese online shoppers in 1998 June survey, spent more money for on line shopping. Since 188 online shoppers answered that they used more than 200,000 yen (about $1,600), it indicates that they are getting used to shopping for more expensive products on line..
Bad Web sites for the Japanese Internet users
| Answer | June 1998 | |
| Difficult to find the information I want to know | 1661 | 30.06% |
| Since the graphics are too heavy, it takes long time to download the page | 1379 | 24.95% |
| Information is not updated often | 887 | 16.05% |
| There is too little information | 629 | 11.38% |
| There in not two-way communication | 487 | 8.81% |
| There is not interesting information | 310 | 5.61% |
| There are not many links to related sites | 59 | 1.07% |
| The graphics are poorly done | 21 | 0.38% |
| Other | 93 | 1.68% |
Survey base = 5,526 people
Comments
According to the survey, the Japanese Internet
users seem to like simpler web sites more than flashy sites. They also
prefer to obtain useful and latest information more frequently.
@