Q.After a trip, do people re-order the local products they loved online?

Almost no data directly measures the trip-to-online-purchase link

As far as we could find, no public open dataset directly asks Japanese travelers whether they bought a region's products online after visiting it, at a nationwide scale. Tourism statistics measure who came and how often; EC statistics measure what sold and how much. But the question that joins them — did the trip lead to a later online purchase? — falls into an institutional blank spot. So the only option is to combine nearby indicators and read between the lines.

The closest figure: 58.2% of inbound visitors keep buying after going home

This is about inbound foreign visitors rather than domestic travelers, but the MAFF-commissioned "FY2018 Souvenir Market Behavior Survey" (conducted by Mitsubishi UFJ Research & Consulting, published March 2019) is the closest hard number we have. Surveying 2,400 people across seven countries, 58.2% of those who felt a Japanese food souvenir was "worth buying" kept purchasing it after returning home. Of those, 24.4% named cross-border EC or mail order from Japan as their channel — rising to 35.6% for Chinese respondents. Note the scope is limited to inbound visitors and food products.

Domestic research on this is very thin

On the domestic side, the research of Professor Noriko Tsujimoto (Momoyama Gakuin University) is just about the only work that directly examines how a travel experience leads to later EC purchases. Her surveys of Chinese visitors (conducted 2017–2018) found that over 60% had re-bought a Japanese food souvenir they came to like via cross-border EC ("often" 21.5% + "have done so" 43.3%). But again, this is Chinese visitors, food only, and roughly nine years old — it can't be generalized to Japanese travelers as a whole.

Reading nearby indicators: furusato tax, related population, mail-order market

With no direct data, the only path is to connect nearby indicators — and several surveys show that a connection to a region spills over into later purchases and visits. Among furusato-tax donors, 10.4% say they now "consciously choose the donated town's products in everyday shopping," and 9.4% "visited the town in person after donating" (RIETI, 2023). Japan's "related population" — people with an ongoing tie to a region — is estimated at about 22.63 million (MLIT, 2025), and the food mail-order market, which includes regional products, has passed ¥5 trillion (Yano Research, 2025). None of these is strictly "trip-triggered," but together they show fertile ground for a regional connection to turn into later spending.

The data gap could be an opportunity for Nara

Nara is full of "I want to taste that again" specialties — kakinoha-zushi, Miwa somen, Yoshino kuzu, Yamato tea. Yet no data, in Nara or nationwide, shows how much people who travel to Nara go on to buy its products online afterwards. Visitor counts and spending are tracked by the JTA and the prefecture, but what comes next — the post-trip online purchase — is a field no one measures. Flip that around, and it's an opening: a town or business that studies it would find clues for turning a one-off visit into recurring sales. Start with the datasets below to check where Nara's tourism spending stands today.

Datasets behind this article

• 消費額観光庁

  Travel and Tourism Consumption Trend Survey (JTA)

  The JTA’s core quarterly statistics on domestic travel — trip counts, overnight stays and spending. Annual prefecture-level tables let you compare spending per trip and travel styles for visitors to Nara nationwide.

  💡Questions this data can answer

  How much does a domestic traveler to Nara spend per trip?

  XLSXPDF

  Updated2026-07-26
• インバウンド観光庁

  Inbound Consumption Trend Survey (Japan Tourism Agency)

  A quarterly survey of foreign visitor spending in Japan (formerly the Foreign Visitor Consumption Trend Survey). Publishes total travel consumption, per-capita spending by country/region, and breakdowns by category such as lodging, dining, and shopping. The baseline data for understanding the scale and structure of inbound consumption.

  💡Questions this data can answer

  How much does a foreign visitor spend per trip on average?

  XLSXPDF

  Updated2026-07-26
• 観光客数奈良県

  Nara Prefecture Tourist Dynamics Survey Report

  Annual survey reports on tourist movements in Nara Prefecture, covering visitor numbers by major tourist site, day-trip vs. overnight ratios, and foreign visitor counts. Reports are available from 2006 onward, enabling long-term time-series comparison.

  💡Questions this data can answer

  How has the annual number of tourists to Nara changed over time?

  PDFXLSX

  Updated2026-07-26
• 商工会議所奈良商工会議所

  Nara Chamber of Commerce Surveys (Pedestrian Counts, Tourist Interviews)

  An archive of surveys by the Nara Chamber of Commerce and Industry, including pedestrian traffic counts in central Nara dating back to 1977 and street interviews with tourists — street-level insights that government statistics don’t capture.

  💡Questions this data can answer

  How has pedestrian traffic in central Nara’s shopping streets changed?

  PDF

  Updated2026-07-26
• RESAS経済産業省・内閣府

  RESAS Tourism Map

  The national big-data dashboard for regional economies. Its tourism maps show destination search rankings and de-facto population by prefecture and municipality — private-sector indicators that ordinary statistics can’t provide.

  💡Questions this data can answer

  Which destinations in Nara are searched for the most?

  HTML

  Updated2026-07-26

Related reading

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