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Smartphone User Behavior Survey 2018 completed

The Institute of Media Environment, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Hirotake Yajima), the Hakuhodo Institute of Shopper Insight, Hakuhodo Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Masayuki Mizushima), and AD-Technology Laboratories, D.A.Consortium Holdings Inc. (Headquarters: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; President: Masaya Shimada) conducted Smartphone User Behavior Survey 2018. The survey is an extension of the organizations’ joint research, which uses three viewpoints—the media environment x shopping x technology—to examine use of smartphones, whose role has spread remarkably in recent years, from just communications to videos and entertainment and even to shopping platforms.

Key takeaways from the Smartphone User Behavior Survey

Background

10 years have passed since the first smartphone went on sale in Japan in 2008 and the ownership rate has reached 79.4 percent
• The iPhone landed in Japan in 2008 with the concept of combining “smart” with “easy to use.”
• Since then, many companies have sold smartphones, and the current ownership rate has climbed to 79.4 percent. (According to Fixed-Point Media Survey 2018, Institute of Media Environment)
• The smartphone has become a platform for all kinds of life functions: communications—phone calls and email, etc.; information collection—such as Web searches; entertainment—in the form of videos, comics, etc.; and even shopping.

Survey findings

1. New information behavior
From a new search every time to attracting information. Users are collecting and saving information before they need it.
• Young people in their teens and twenties—the so-called smartphone natives—make deft use of smartphone functions to attract information of interest so they can have it at their fingertips.
• Saving information of interest and using screenshots or social media, just in case, is taken for granted. Furthermore, following or actively liking information of interest to automatically collect information that may be beneficial is a behavior that has emerged among the young, especially among young women.

2. Changes in decision making
The more information-attracting behaviors exhibited, the more likely decisions are made faster.
• Respondents in the high information-attracting segment, having six or more of the 12 surveyed behaviors, were much more likely to say the speed at which they make decisions has increased when choosing a program or content to watch and when picking a product to buy.

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