UZRA Offers New Route to Representative Japan Sample

Tokyo-based firm UZRA Inc. has launched torima.in Global, which allows overseas companies to commission AI-moderated interviews with Japanese consumers, in Japanese, and delivers transcripts with translations, an English summary, and a further, more detailed report.

The company specializes in providing Japanese consumer research for businesses based outside the country. For the new service, buyers choose the questions and an AI moderator then conducts the interviews in Japanese through text chat.

UZRA says international recruiting platforms run their recruitment in English, and notes that 'The Japanese residents who complete an English sign-up flow are not a random sample of Japan - they skew toward people who work in English, study abroad, or moved to Japan from somewhere else. For a study about how a product fits into ordinary life in Japan, that is the wrong population, and it is a hard problem to see from the outside: the platform reports that it found you ten participants in Japan, and it did.' As a result, the company says teams seeking a true representative sample often fall back on a Japanese research agency, but this takes weeks and is far more expensive.

The firm says clients will get 'an English summary for an overview of the responses, transcripts with translations for examining individual conversations, and a report covering all interviews for reviewing findings across the study.'

A sample report available on the firm's web site shows the form of the deliverables before an order is placed, allowing potential users to see whether the structure and level of detail will suit a particular project. There is no minimum number of interviews per order, and a half-price launch offer gives users completed interviews for $15 apiece until December 31st. Participant incentives are a separate cost item.

'Our aim is for overseas teams to start with the questions they really need answered,' says company founder Tatsuhiro Sato, 'and to be able to examine both the Japanese conversations and the report for themselves, so that neither becomes a black box when they review the research.'

Web site: www.torima.in/global .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.