A Profile of Japanese Web Users

A brief look at the results of Fujitsu teleparc's Web user survey.

by John Drake

In Computing Japan's november 1995 issue (page 30), I presented a profile of Japanese Web users based on the results of a summer 1995 survey conducted by CyberSpace Japan (CSJ). In autumn 1995, Fujitsu teleparc conducted a similar survey of persons accessing the Japanese version of its Web site. The results of that survey were generally in line with those obtained by CSJ, with a few significant exceptions.

It is clear that the Japanese Web is still the domain of young males employed in technical or scientific jobs. Of the over 1,000 persons (63% of them teleparc members) who answered the teleparc survey, 86% were male (11% were female, and 3% did not specify their sex). This is a substantially higher percentage of female respondents than for the CSJ survey (just 4%), which may be attributable both to the type of site (a search engine versus a general-information content provider) and to the ongoing influx of more women to the Net.

In terms of age distribution, the two surveys showed a similar profile. Users in their twenties predominate (54% in the CSJ survey, 49% in the teleparc survey), followed by those in their thirties (34% and 35%, respectively) and forties (6% and 9%). Those aged 24 or younger comprised well over one-quarter of respondents for both surveys (34% for CSJ, 29% for teleparc). The CSJ survey (which permitted just one response per user) found that 36% of users access most often from school, 35% from work, and 28% from home. The teleparc survey, meanwhile (which allowed multiple responses), showed that about 30% access from school, about 45% from work, and 40% from home.

The largest segment of teleparc survey respondents work in R&D jobs (24.4%), followed closely by college and university students (22.9%). Other typical job categories are computer engineer (12.5%), planning/research/media (12.3%), sales/marketing (5.5%), non-computer engineer (5.3%), and management/administration (4.3%). This generally follows the trend of the CSJ survey, though that survey had significantly more students (36%) and engineers (about 30%) and far fewer researchers (10%).

Of employed respondents to the teleparc survey, by far the largest number work in computer- and information-related firms. While this is due, in part, to professional interest in the Internet, another factor is surely that the tools for Internet access are more easily available in such companies.

Asked "What Internet functions do you use frequently?" over 95% answered "the World Wide Web" (as might be expected since this was a Web-based survey). The next most popular Internet function was e-mail (over 75%) followed by FTP and USENET newsgroups (see the accompanying bar graph).

Some 58% of teleparc survey respondents access the Internet more than once per day, and another 20% access daily. The CSJ survey did not ask for number of accesses, but it did show that 52% are online more than 4 hours per week.

These results confirm that, in spite of the ongoing media hoopla about the Internet and World Wide Web in Japan, Internet use has not yet spread widely beyond the halls of academia and the walls of Japan's corporate R&D and engineering departments.

The full results of the Fujitsu teleparc survey are available online in the original Japanese at http://teleparc.infoweb.or.jp/ja/info/enq/index.htm or in English translation at http://teleparc.infoweb.or.jp/en/yard/surveys.htm.