Buying stuff from Japan online, ¥¥¥ or nah: DEJAPAN proxy shopping survey results
Japan proxy shopping. Not something loads of people know about. But the people who do… have reeeeal strong opinions on it. You guys sure know what you want, and we mean that as a good thing.
We feel like feedback direct from the weeb’s mouth is the best way to improve our service. Can’t make our (current and future) customers happy without knowing how. So… we made a survey and asked. Shock!
In a niche market like ours, we weren’t expecting thousands of replies. Not unless we got trolled by 4chan, or something. We got double figures anyways! Enough to get a peek at what you’re all thinking.
And don’t feel like you’ve missed out on speaking up, either. We’ve kept the survey form running. If reading this blog makes you wanna go mess up our findings, fill out the DEJAPAN proxy shopping survey now.
Let’s take it one more time from the top
First up, hands up – who’s used a proxy shopping service before? Over 80% said yes. No surprises (yet). And the majority plan to shop again sometime in the next 6 months. Looking forward to seeing you all soon!
Most of the few people who said no… just didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. It’s true that low awareness is a challenge. Can’t order stuff from Japan with a proxy if you don’t even know that’s an option.
Here’s our blog post on how to use a Japan proxy shopping service like ours (okay, spoiler, it’s totally ours). Followed by the one explaining how the DEJAPAN item request service works. And if you’re settled in for a long read, go through our whole Yahoo! Auctions Japan tag.
How to make friends and influence key consumer behaviours
We checked which proxies you know and use already. And we swear that question wasn’t a sneaky way of getting all our competitors’ names. Unsurprisingly, a lot of you have DEJ accounts and shop with us. Thanks!
There are a whole bunch of reasons to shop from Japan via proxy, so we left the ‘why?’ question open.
‘I have no other way of buying stuff from Japan’ was the most common answer – that’s not rocket science. We give you access to merch that’s only available on Japanese websites. No Japanese credit card, address or phone number? No problems here. And we got some other great replies. Like ‘it’s easy’, and ‘it’s simple’, and ‘it’s safe’.
The internet is for… leaving reviews everywhere
Some of the stuff we asked was multiple choice, so we could get more answers. Like ‘where do you get info about proxy shopping services?’, because maybe it’s not all from one place.
The top 2 were Google and social media. It’s a good thing we’re on Twitter, huh. (and Facebook… and Instagram…) But guess what came 3rd? Friends, family, and random internet strangers. Yep, positive word of mouth’s something to work on for sure.
Asking ‘what helps you pick a proxy?’ gave us 28 different answers. Leaving that one open didn’t backfire, though, because the replies were golden. One of them was just ‘ANIME MERCH’ – if that was you, we love you.
There was a clear winner in the mix, and it was ‘Low, or no, service fees/commission’.
We can help you with that!
With DEJAPAN, the service fee and commission on all orders are both ZERO. Our ‘consolidation + inspection + insurance’ plan is currently FREE (that might have to change in future, which would suck, but it’s that way for now). And we’ll keep as many of our optional charges truly optional for as long as we can.
This is maybe like the ‘dunno what a Japan proxy is’ answer – many folks just don’t know about our (lack of) fees yet. Easy enough to fix.
Putting your money where your mouse is
Our last question was ‘What’s the ONE thing that would make you try out a new/different proxy service?’
2/3 of you want it cheaper. Cheaper service fees and charges, or cheaper shipping. (Most likely both, we guess.) Those 2 choices made up 66% of the replies. Not something we can sit back and ignore.
We know – we do – that price is super important to you. We saw that pattern in everyone’s answers. And a bunch of the free comments at the end were about cutting global delivery costs.
The ability to combine items and orders for delivery already saves our customers loads. In 2017 we lowered the price of FedEx shipping, and gave out coupon codes worth tens of thousands in yen. This ain’t something we ignore, far from it.
Go on, don’t hold back, tell us everything
One last time, to get your voice heard complete the DEJAPAN survey. Your other options are:
