Japan-VALS™

Japan-VALS™ segments the Japanese marketplace on the basis of mindset, emphasizing the identification of early adopters. Japanese companies apply Japan-VALS to understand their uniquely dynamic consumers better. Companies planning to do business in Japan can gain a critical strategic advantage by using this system because it reveals and explains the nuances of the Japanese marketplace.

Funded by the Research Institute of System Science (RISS) of NTT Data & Communications Corp., Japan-VALS is the product of an 18-month development effort led by SRI International. Incorporating a questionnaire of 49 attitude items, Japan-VALS is the most reliable and powerful market analysis tool for Japan available today.

What Can Japan-VALS™ Do For You?

With Japan-VALS, businesses can:

  • Monitor lifestyle trends and forecasts and interpret significant changes in the consumer environment—for example, they can spot consumption trends by monitoring the behavior of innovative Japan-VALS segments.
  • Identify unfilled consumer needs and generate new product ideas. Thinking about Japan-VALS types leads to striking new strategies, concepts, ideas, package designs, and line extensions.
  • Segment the market. Japan-VALS is an ideal method to answer such questions as "To whom should I market my product?" "What should the main benefit be?"
  • Differentiate a brand. Determining the Japan-VALS profile of a product in comparison with that of its competitors demonstrates unfilled positioning and helps to set the brand apart through sales-promotion activities, packaging, and advertising.
  • Develop more effective, targeted selling tools and strategies. Examining the attitudes and behavior of a selected segment can lead to startling insights about how to make merchandising and promotions more efficient.
  • Communicate effectively with the target audience. Marketers need to have a feel for their prospective market beyond broad demographics. Japan-VALS provides the understanding of people's psychology necessary to develop advertising that talks to them in their own language.

Japan-VALS™: Change Regions and Life Orientations

Japan-VALS™ by design explains and models social change in Japan—not only change in institutions or ideas, but change in consumer markets and media as well.

Japan-VALS divides society into segments on the basis of two key consumer attributes: primary motivation and attitudes about social change. Primary motivation is simply what interests or animates a person the most: life, occupational duties, and recreational interests. Japan-VALS identifies three primary motivations: Tradition, Achievement, and Self-Expression. Japan-VALS also indicates degrees of consumer innovation. As the arrow in the diagram shows, innovativeness increases from bottom to top. Integrators are the most innovative; Sustainers are the least. Japan-VALS clarifies the processes of social change and innovation diffusion in Japanese society.

Japan-VALS™ Framework

Japan-VALS™ Consumer Segments

  • Integrators are highest on the Japan-VALS measure of Innovation. These consumers are active, inquisitive, trend leading, informed, and affluent. They travel frequently and consume a wide range of media: print and broadcast, niche, and foreign.
  • Self-Innovators and Self-Adapters score high on Self-Expression. These consumers desire personal experience, fashionable display, social activities, daring ideas, and exciting, graphic entertainment.
  • Ryoshiki Innovators and Ryoshiki Adapters score highest on Occupations. Education, career achievement, and professional knowledge are their personal focus, but home, family, and social status are their guiding concerns.
  • Tradition Innovators and Tradition Adapters score highest on the measure of Traditional Ways. These consumers adhere to traditional religions and customs, prefer long-familiar home furnishings and dress, and hold conservative social opinions.
  • High Pragmatics and Low Pragmatics do not score high on any life-orientation dimension. They are not very active and not well informed; they have few interests and seem flexible or even uncommitted in their lifestyle choices.
  • Sustainers score lowest on the Innovation and Self-Expression dimensions. Lacking money, youth, and high education, these consumers dislike innovation and are typically oriented to sustaining the past.