Magazine Survey 2012 being executed

The magazine market in Japan is in constant flux and current developments are a proof of this. Western celebrity styles emanating from LA and foreign blogger sites, magazines such as Gisele, Glitter, lately also Post-Gyaru titles such as ViVi and Sweet, and of course the popular gossip magazines (with Gossips as the most popular choice) are keen on keeping their readers up to date on who wear what, with Gossip Girl stars making the front pages of many publications. And of course there are Vogue Girl, Elle Girl, and the more complex reasoning behind Nylon and why it fits neatly into the fashionista narrative among Japanese young female consumers.

We wanted to know more. So we started to back up our data that we have gathered in over 100 deep interviews with concrete statistics that will show us how the magazine market has developed since 2010 when we conducted our first large-scale survey among Japanese elite university students. Back then we gathered 1,483 responses, with 890+ female respondents. 

Now we are on campus again and will go to to the core of what, how, and who. Expect updates on our insights within the next weeks. I am back to reading Tokyo ViVi now, one of the interesting "hybrids" that are the result of the recent developments, with a yet to become clearer concept, somwhere between ViVi and Nylon from the design, with a sort of "grunge/blogger-esque/top shop/american apparel" style but basically unchanged brand selection when compared to ViVI. Even though the name would imply, there is no overly focus on Tokyo in this magazine.