Recently, Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO) released an interesting survey about Japanese consumers' mindset on design. One of the questions was "Upon purchase, for which product do you consider design as the most important decision factor? Choose three."
Which products do you think ranked high? From top, they were:
- mobile phones
- watches
- bags
- cars
Enlarge and see details from the charts below:
While bags were skewed to women and cars to men, mobile phones had quite a consistent ratio across gender. As for the age, younger generation considered phone design more important, but still, apart from people over 50s, figures were higher than any other products they surveyed.
This came to our surprise, as we have been thinking how wrist watches lost its original purpose and became a fashion product. Looking at the data, it seems that that is more of the case for mobile, especially for the young. Why is that?
Our assumptions: Subtle design queues? Although many Japanese phones embodies similar spec like fold, large quality displays, and large keypads which make them look alike, perhaps there are design elements that make people choose one phone from the other. Or, perhaps it's a reverse way of saying what products offer do not matter much because operator always drove new services and multiple manufacturers provide phones enabling them at the same time. In addition, many services are provided by provided by third parties via mobile Internet.
In any case, an interesting result from JIPDO.
Source: JIDPO (in Japanese)
Leave a comment