On 19 October, the Nikkei Marketing Journal published the results of its fifth Internet life survey, in which 10,000 users were questioned regarding their activities and preferences. The poll, conducted via the Internet over the period 12–20 September, received valid responses from 10,137 men and women 16–80 years of age.
The questionnaire found that the average outlays for purchases via the web during 2016 totalled ¥197,000, down 6.4% year-on-year (YoY). Some 69.7% of respondents said they use their devices to view videos or listen to music, up 3.8% YoY. 62.5% of respondents said they watch YouTube and other video sites, up 4.3% YoY. And, thanks to the popularity of Pokémon GO, the number of game users was up 5.8 points YoY, accounting for 25.6% of respondents.
E-commerce’s decline was reflected in fewer purchases of computer equipment and appliances; gifts; food and beverages; as well as sundry goods. Consumer outlays did increase in six categories: fashion; medications and supplements; books; CDs and DVDs, game software and other digital content; hobbies and recreation; travel; as well as purchases of tickets and gift coupons.
Amazon Japan and Rakuten Ichiba achieved near parity as the most popular general shopping portals, with the former particularly popular among users in their teens and twenties. Yahoo! Shopping ran a distant third.
Broken down by product genre, for IT products and electric appliances the leaders were Yodobashi, BIC Camera and net auction sites such as Yahoo! Auction. For foods LOHACO showed rapid growth, followed by several co-ops and Aeon’s Internet supermarket. For apparel, respondents named the Uniqlo Online Store and Zozo Town as the top two shopping sites, with former leader Nissen dropping to sixth.
For the travel industry, the top four sites were Rakuten Travel, Jaran Net, JTB and H.I.S. The most popular restaurant reservations services were Gurunavi, Tabelog, Hot Pepper Gurume and Ikyu.com.
Meanwhile, cheaper smartphones, such as those from Rakuten Mobile, OCN Mobile ONE, mineo and Yahoo’s Y!mobile have been making strong inroads, particularly with men in their 40s.
In related news, The Nielsen Company Japan announced results of a survey conducted during the first half of 2016, concerning the amount of time people use their smartphones. The data was analysed based on information from 8,000 smartphone monitors.
Users were segmented into heavy and light categories, both accounting for 20% of users, with the remaining 60% termed middle users. It was found that heavy users consume YouTube videos and other free content for an average of 20 days each month—more than twice the time by other users—with women under 34 accounting for 32% of all heavy users. Then, turning to those individuals in Japan who access the Internet, as of the end of August, some 56.97 million were thought to do so via smartphone, 1.3 times the number of those doing so using a personal computer.