A few years ago, a piece of research (1) conducted by the Japanese Government on the life satisfaction of high school students caused a stir.
The conclusion was that only about 45% of Japanese high school students are satisfied with their lives, compared to around 80% of those in Europe and the US.
While the media ran stories focusing on how Japan needs to do more to ensure young people are confident, they overlooked the study’s small print — stating that Japanese tend to respond to rating questions much lower, comparing themselves to others when deciding on an appropriate response.
This doesn’t mean that Japanese high school students are generally depressed and lack self confidence, but they consider themselves average when compared with their peers.
This same phenomenon can be found in all sorts of scale based surveys in Japan, including NPS. Our clients are often shocked to see very negative NPS scores from Japanese respondents who otherwise seem engaged with and pleased with their products.
This article will cover the reason for this, and some things to be aware of when conducting surveys in Japan.
What is NPS?
For those who are unaware, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric that is often used to quantify customer loyalty and satisfaction with a score between -100 (very bad) and +100 (very good).
Survey respondents are asked a question along the lines of “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to your friends and family?” and are given a scale of 0–10 to respond.
It is also essential that space is provided for respondents to give the reason for their response.
Japanese Survey Rating Trends
In general, Japanese participants tend to give answers close to the middle on scale based questions as they compare themselves and their answers with others when doing so.
For example, on Japan’s top restaurant review site Tabelog, reviewers rate restaurants out of 5.
97% of restaurants on Tabelog have a rating of 3.5 or less, and the top 3% of restaurants in the country receive a score of 3.5 to 4. Only around 500 restaurants in the whole of Japan have a score of more than 4 out of 5. (Ratings are also influenced by the status of users and are not simple averages of all ratings)
This doesn’t mean that Japan is full of disappointing restaurants. It simply means that people have different thought process when rating — a restaurant may have been great, but a user rating will be thinking about how it compares to other restaurants when choosing their rating.
When NPS scores are calculated, only those giving scores of 9 or 10 on the scales are classified as "promoters", with 7–8s classified as “passive” and all those below 6 “detractors”. This works for Western respondents who tend to give very high or very low scores, but leads to Japanese companies receiving extremely low NPS scores.
Likelihood to recommend ≠ Satisfaction
Another reason that NPS is particularly ineffective in Japan is that it is focused on the likelihood of someone recommending a product or service to a friend or family member. As Japan is a collectivist society and people tend to care a lot about how their actions impact others, a recommendation is a big deal.
Even if someone is satisfied with a product, they may not feel comfortable recommending it. We have seen this reflected in clients’ Japanese NPS survey comments.
Common comments from Japanese respondents who gave a “detractor” rating include;
“I don’t have any friends who are interested in this type of product.”
“This sort of product is really something you need to choose for yourself.”
“I’ve only just started using it, I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending it until I get to know the product more.”
“Who am I to be recommending things to people…”
Typical Japanese NPS Scores
NTT Marketing Solutions announces the companies with the top NPS scores in Japan each year, and it is common for most of these companies to have negative scores.
Some top scores for 2023 were…
- The #1 NPS for credit cards was Rakuten Card with -27.1
- The #1 NPS for banks was SPI Net Bank with -16.7
- The #1 NPS for car insurance was Tokyo Kaijou Nichido with -32.7
Qualtrics XM Institute also ran a study (2) comparing NPS trends across the world, and found that Japan and South Korea were the only countries where consumers tend to give a negative NPS even when they are satisfied with a product or service.
In the chart above, you can see that Japan also showed the smallest gap in NPS when a company is liked vs disliked - reflecting the tendency to answer survey questions in the middle of the scale.
How to do NPS in Japan right?
First, we recommend reflecting on your reason for asking the NPS question — what are you really trying to find out? Relying on other metrics such as engagement or customer feedback can provide more meaningful data.
If you must use NPS, try not to compare Japanese NPS scores directly to those from other countries, and keep in mind that you might get a very low score. Also be sure to pay attention to the open-ended response to understand the reasons why a respondent gave a certain score.
It can also be effective to give up the scale and use simpler questions - such as Netflix's original take on the NPS question, which simply asks if the user has recommended the product to anyone in the past, with a yes or no answer, or Mercari Japan's rating system, which abandoned a three level rating scale in 2020 to simply allow buyers to rate their experiences with sellers as "good" or "bad".
Need help conducting UX research surveys in Japan? We can help you design culturally aware surveys and source local respondents. Learn more here.
