Abstract
Several investigations have sought to clarify the attitudes of consumers to rice. One such investigation involves a closed-form questionnaire survey, and another is an interview survey, similar to a group interview, that poses questions to people in a group. The responses to the open-ended questions collected from the questionnaire survey constitute a considerable amount of qualitative data, which may provide us with new findings. To date there has not been any effective technique for analyzing such data. However, the development of text mining has now enabled the analysis of large amounts of textual data.
With the aim of clarifying the attitudes of consumers to rice, this study analyzed the responses to the open-ended questions by using text mining. According to the result obtained, the concerns of the consumers pertaining to rice were classified into three groups: “buying rice,” “rice and agriculture in Japan,” and “safety.” It was observed that many of the responses that fell into the category “buying rice” were those of full-time housewives. A number of the responses that were categorized in “rice and agriculture in Japan” were those of men aged 60 years and above. Finally, many of the responses that were categorized in “safety” were those of people who were sensitive to the use of pesticides.
