It has been an amazing class/trip to Japan. I learned a lot about mobile consumer behavior and the cultural characteristics that drive some of the behavioral differences. In the end, if you boil the trip down to its base element(s), it all comes down to culture.  When I started this class, the equation I came up with for mobile consumer behavior was Psychology + Culture + Capability =...
Today is our last day in Japan and I got up early, ate and headed out to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a place I’ve always wanted to go and it did not disappoint. It’s about 1/2 hour from our hotel and it was easy to find. There are roughly 1 million photo opportunities and the repetition and process of getting from shrine to shrine was hypnotic. Truly something to be...
We had two full days left in Japan and my students needed to take everything they’d seen/heard/learned (also known as data) and use it to write the create the final project. The final project was a paper and is outlined here. I met with each student team – primary and secondary – to review their area of focus. Â I was very happy with what I saw and was excited to see the final...
After a brief stop at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It was brief because the top three floors were closed! We then went back to Kyoto on the bullet train. Once we arrived we settled into the hotel (same rooms!) and then headed out to the Ginkaku-ji. After that we took a look at Heian Shrine. This is the shrine that Scarlett Johansson visited in Lost in Translation. The thing that’s amazing about...
So . . . tonight my students and I had the very good fortune of having dinner with Mr. Norio Murakami, the former president of Google Japan. We had a great time and he’s an amazing man. (I was introduced by one of my students.) We talked about privacy, AI (no matter what Elon says), the Internet of things and Japanese mobile culture. Mr. Murakami also happens to know some very famous people...
This morning we went to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. This sounds like something that’s riddled with history but in fact, it isn’t. The palace is the working residence of the Emperor of Japan. (Yes. Japan has an Emperor and he’s much like the Queen of England in regards to power and responsibility.) This is going to sound stupid but the palace wasn’t much to see. After...
Today we started in Kyoto and ended up in Tokyo. In the morning, we visited the Kiyomizu-dera and SanjÅ«sangen-dÅ. We started to see more and more of the selfie sticks. (I guess the choice between genetically engineering people with longer arms or having them buy selfie stick, the stick makes more sense.) Also, when people take selfies in the US, they seem a little self-conscious. In Japan...
We conducted 12 qualitative interviews at Doshisha University over the 3rd and 4th. Each interview lasted roughly one hour and had two students, one translator and one interviewee. We worked hard to help interviewees relax since they were outnumbered 3 to 1. Luckily for us, it seemed as though everyone knew one another – translators/interviewees – and that seemed to help. I’ve...
I received an email from Carol Johnson the marketing chair at Daniels College of Business. She asked me if I would follow up with someone who had emailed her. His name was Dax Hamman. Now you have to understand that Daniels Profs get a lot of emails from “the outside world†– especially Carol – asking for help or some assistance. So I was somewhat skeptical. I looked up his profile and...
It rained. It rained copious amounts. This is not something Coloradans are used to. We get snow but it’s sunny 387.2 days a year. We were supposed to do a tour today of Doshisha University, but it was raining too hard. We would have needed a submarine. We also missed the Dean. But we got to meet Yu and he’s a great asset. Very attentive and speaks/writes three languages. Chinese, Japanese...