research panel asia

October 29th, 2009

Research Panel Asia is established and it launched a China panel

Tokyo, Japan - 29 October, 2009: EC Navi, a Japanese major internet service company, announced the launch of its 100% subsidiary, Research Panel Asia Inc.(RPA), to build online survey panel business in the Asian region, and RPA launched its 1st oversea panel, 91wenwen.com, in China today.

EC Navi, a company lead by Shinsuke Usami and a major player of Internet business in Japan having one of the biggest online user database through its multiple point rewarding services, announced today that it established Research Panel Asia Inc ("RPA") on 1 October, 2009, as its 100% subsidiary to build online panel business in Asia outside Japan. It is the second company of EC Navi group engaged in research area following Research Panel Inc which was established in Y2005 and has been conducting panel supplying business mainly in Japan.

As the first important event of the new company, it launched its first oversea panel service "91wenwen.com" on 29 October, 2009 in China where the growth power is remarkably high even relatively in the hyper-growing region.

The new company, lead by Shogo Nakazato, is aiming to build multiple survey panels in Asian countries taking full advantage of assets and high-level know-how such as quality control, panel operation and service usability improvement accumulated through the 10-year experience of online panel supply and media business at EC Navi group.

Research Panel Asia wants to be the most trusted regional source of online survey panel in Asia for those global companies would like to conduct research in the region. In the long term, it also pursues other business opportunities such as original internet media service based on its own experiences and know-how of doing online businesses in various fields.

Market overview

The region has been enjoying its economic growth by supplying cost-effective & high-performance production bases to global manufacturing companies as the competition among those companies is getting fierce. As the region is becoming politically more and more stable and social infrastructures are being deployed, average income level of nations in this region has been improved significantly. The population of the Asian region now reaches 4.1 billion, which means more than 60% of the world population (6.8 billion according to "World Population Prospects: The 2009 Revision). This population growth leveraged by the growth of income level promises the area to be the biggest consumer market rather than merely a production place for Western countries.
Regarding the internet industry, according to the report issued in July, 2009, from Forrester Research about the world online population, online population of Asian countries would be the biggest part, 43%, of those of world's population which is expected to reach 2.2 billion in 2013. Therefore, it is considered that the demand for online services from Asian citizens will be rapidly developed and diversified.

Message from President of Research Panel Asia

Shogo Nakazato, President of Research Panel Asia, says "Our vision is "Empower People, Empower Asia". Our mission is to contribute to further development of the Asian region by supplying unique internet services conveniently and valuably to the Asian under the spirit of the vision. There are many copies of famous US/European online services in those Asian countries, but we see a great potential of original services based on their own local life styles and cultures emerging. From business point of view, our 1st challenge is to be a top regional online panel supplier and 91wenwen.com is its first product. We are aiming to create a high-quality Chinese panel of 300,000 users by the end of 2010."

About 91wenwen.com

At 91wenwen.com, a user can get 50~5000 online point reward by providing their opinions to the surveys delivered. They can exchange the point to RMB through Alipay online payment system (https://www.alipay.com/) which is the biggest of such kind in China from 1000points equals 10RMB. RPA continues to pay reasonable effort to improve liquidity of the point incentive leveraging the know-how of EC Navi including adding attractive ways to use the point such as "Manmanzou point" that can be used in a hotel reservation service "Manmanzou" (http://www.manmanzou.com/) to book luxury hotels in China.