Japan is a highly consumer oriented society, with advertising everywhere. There is also a very high expectation for corporate loyalty, and service to customers. No surpirse about these figures that indicate 40% of lack is in time and energy ( 2 – 4).

While I have written before about the exceptional service customers get in Japan, this suggests the pressures this creates are not sustainable. Its not humanly possible to sustain this level of service. A new model is required.

“What do you lack [most] now?”

1 Money 30%
2 Sense of drive, desire to act 15%
3 Time 13%
4 Sense of extra capacity, time for oneself 8%
5 Physical strength, energy 7%
6 Sleep 6%
7 Stamina 6%
8 Tenacity 6%
9 Economic power 5%
10 Intelligence, knowledge 5%

N=3,546
Research conducted by Dimsdrive
April, 2007

Source: Japan Marketing News

Relevance to Bankwatch:

One additional positive advantage of the distributed model that we see in eBay, Amazon, and starting in P2P Lending is that the load is shared amongst the community, rather than asking one customer service representative to shoulder all the customers issues.