Barrett Ishida 1/17/20 Barrett Ishida 1/17/20

Japanese Consumers and Media Attention in 2020

About Japanese consumer attention in media in 2020, what channels they use, where they shop, and how they pay.

Japanese Consumers and Media Consumption in 2020

Media attention in mobile accounts for 36% of all media attention in Japan
Japanese have media contact for 411.6 minutes/day, the highest ever
Amazon is the biggest e-commerce platform in Japan, and Amazon Prime Video is the biggest subscription video service

Japan is often seen as a difficult market with consumer mindsets and behaviors that are very different from the West. This is true, and the ability to understand is made more difficult by the fact that there’s not a whole lot of information available in English.

I put together a report that gives some insight on what Japanese consumers are doing now - where they’re in contact with media and what channels and platforms they’re using. I decided to share some of that here.

Breakdown of Japanese consumer attention in media in 2019

Media attention in mobile channels continues to grow at the expense of every other channel. Linear TV is still the biggest single channel, and that can be expected due to Japan’s population skewing towards the older demographic. It has shrunk though - in 2006, TV accounted for 51% of the total.

Japanese consumer attention in media in 2020 broken down by age and gender

Generally, mobile phone use is more prominent in younger age demographics and TV use is more prominent in older age demographics, but there is some discrepancy between males and females.

15-19 year old females consume the most mobile media, and the age group that consumes the most linear TV media are females in their 60s.

The average time per day Japanese are in contact with media

Japanese continue to be in contact with media more and more. In 2019, that number reached 411.6 minutes per day, a new record.

Mobile phone use saw the biggest increase with people spending 14.5 minutes more per day (117.6 min/day total) than they did in 2018.

Survey results asking whether or not people feel they overuse their mobile phones

Despite media consumption in mobile devices increasing, Japanese generally don’t feel they’re overusing them compared to consumers in other countries.

While 30% of Japanese consumers reported over-usage of their mobile devices, 46% of Koreans and 65% of Chinese consumers responded in the same way.

The same survey showed that Japanese make little effort to curb usage compared to others.

A survey showing which device Japanese consumers use

The percentage of Japanese consumers who use smartphones is still relatively low (74%).

In China for example, that number is 96%, in South Korea 92%, in India 93%, the UK 88%, Australia 91%, Canada 83%. This shows Japan lags in speed of adoption but may suggest that there’s still much growth to be seen as feature phones are being phased out, phone service plans change and 5G service begins.

The amount of time Japanese spend doing each activity on their mobile device. Weekdays (left), Weekends (right).

While mobile device use increases, there’s a lot of activities that are being done with the device. The above chart breaks down exactly what people are doing.

Work-related activities such as email have high usage rates during the weekdays while video sites and social media see boosts during the weekends.

Social media use is the highest overall activity, and the discrepancy between male and female social media use is considerable (a difference of 12.9 min on weekdays, 15.2 min on weekends)

Japanese juniorr high school and high school app/site usage in 2016 vs 2019

The biggest social media channels in Japan are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The messenger LINE continues to have an incredibly high usage rate, especially since Japanese typically don’t use text messaging or iMessage.

To get a sense of where things are trending, we can look at junior high school and high school student usage in 2016 vs 2019. While there’s no significant shift, it does show that even apps like LINE, which has an 86% daily active user rate in Japan, isn’t invincible.

For reference, 37.3% of junior high students had a smartphone in 2016 versus 60.9% in 2019, and 85.5% of high school students had one in 2016 versus 94.5% today.

Streaming video on demand (SVOD) usage in Japan

Streaming video services are still relatively new for mainstream Japan, and only started to take off within the last two years or so.

Amazon Prime Video has the biggest marketshare largely due to its tie in with Amazon Prime. Hulu is second and Netflix third.

The most popular e-commerce platforms in Japan in 2019

Amazon also is the owner of the most popular e-commerce platform in Japan, although Rakuten is right behind it. Shoppers using the two platforms are increasingly becoming mobile-only.

Amazon grew 10% while Rakuten grew 8% over the last year.

CtoC services Mercari and Rakuma grew 33% and 34% respectively.

Payments of choice for Japanese consumers broken down by age

Japan is famous for being a cash-based society, and it still very much is. 2019 showed that things are slowly changing, however, and the Japanese government is aggressively pushing for Japan to be less cash-dependent.

48.4% of consumers surveyed said cash was their most used payment of choice. Credit cards came in second at 34%.

Males are bigger users of mobile and contactless payments, accounting for an average of 65.5% of the transactions.

Users of the most popular mobile payment services in Japan

A lot of companies are looking to gain majority marketshare in Japanese mobile payments. The biggest marketshare holder as of right now is PayPay, part of the Softbank/Yahoo Japan group.

There’s more to the actual report, such as the breakdown of social media channels in Japan. If you’d like the report, feel free to contact me and I’ll send it to you.

KEEP IN TOUCH:

LIFE IN JAPAN

TRAVEL IN JAPAN

TRAVELS

Barrett Ishida 2/8/17 Barrett Ishida 2/8/17

Japanese and Social Media — A Little Different

Japanese have adapted to using international social networks, yet, their preferences and usage differs a little.

When I moved to Japan in 2009, everyone in the country was on mixi, the Japan-only social network. In the following years, Japan finally stepped out and began using international networks for the first time.
Still, their preferences and behaviors are a little different. Here are my observations:

1. LINE

Japanese prefer LINE as their go-to social app, and it has the most users out of any in the country. They may prefer it because it’s Japanese, for one, and they started a “cute sticker” culture that matches Japanese “kawaii” culture quite well.

It allows for private communication with people they know, without requiring info like their phone number to be given out, lessening risk which works well for their risk-averse culture.

More popular messenger apps like WhatsApp is almost non-existent in the country, as the typical person has no need for it.

2. Twitter

Twitter is used like a big chatroom more often than a global listening and a direct engagement tool.

Many keep their accounts private and use icons that are not their normal selves (ex: anime characters, highly modified photos, a celebrity’s photo, etc.). Many ignore engagement from people outside of their circle completely. After tweeting at someone, I’ve seen people tweet out “A stranger tweeted me…” or reply and ask “Who are you??” (Not a ‘Who do you think you are?’ type of way but literally a ‘Do I know you? Why are you contacting me?’ way).

3. Facebook

While not as big with the teenage and early-20’s demographic, Facebook is big. It loses out on potential users early on, however, as I’ve noticed many not being able to figure out how to use it. There must be some UI issue that has trouble hurdling the culture.

One big difference in how Japanese use Facebook versus say, the US, is that it is also kind of their LinkedIn. Many will use it for business connections and will frequently post job-related topics.

4. Instagram

Instagram is gaining in popularity but is still far less popular than Twitter, even for the young. Similarly to Twitter, many will keep their accounts private and a significant amount of them will choose to not post their faces and keep their identities ambiguous.

Since Instagram Stories got released, I haven’t noticed any significant difference in usage between Japanese and other nationalities. It’s worth noting that Snapchat has yet to crack the Japan market, and while SNOW (the Snapchat copy) is popular amongst the young, it’s not used as a social app but rather just a face lens app.

My observations are also reflected in the monthly active user count for these networks:

Japanese MAU in Japan as of 12/2016, by IMJ Backyard

And for reference, you can see that Japan’s preference of social apps are quite different from most other countries:

Generation-Z social app preferences, by LSA

KEEP IN TOUCH:

Barrett Ishida 1/13/17 Barrett Ishida 1/13/17

Things About to Start Trending Amongst Japanese Teenage Girls in 2017

Apps, people and businesses that may begin trending in Japan in 2017 amongst teenage girls.

According to survey results posted on Japanese site Oricon Style, these are what look to be hot topics in 2017 amongst the Japanese junior high and high school female demographic. The survey was done by teenage girls from Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.