Pregledni rad
Making and consuming characters
Masae Kanai
; Ekonomski fakultet Sveučilišta ekonomije i prava, Osaka, Japan
Yoritoshi Hara
; Fakultet trgovine Sveučilišta Meiji, Tokyo, Japan
Hajime Kobayashi
orcid.org/0000-0001-5546-0176
; Fakultet trgovine Sveučilišta Meiji, Tokyo, Japan
Masaaki Takemura
; Fakultet trgovine Sveučilišta Meiji, Tokyo, Japan
Sažetak
This paper shall introduce a new phenomenon about consumption. This is related to consumption of characters like Mickey Mouse and Hello, Kitty. The phenomenon appears prominently in Japan. In order to examine consumption of characters and the strategies for creating characters, we conducted a case study on a set of marketing strategies of a toy manufacturer in Japan. Traditionally, consumption research is asserted using the uni-methodological paradigm. The uni-methodological paradigm here means that researchers have a methodological exclusiveness stance to any other research approaches. Hirschman and Holbrook (1992) distinguish five non-interchangeable research approaches on consumer research. For
instance, from an economic point of view, consumption could be assumed as a problem solving method to increase utility. Baudrillard (1968, 1970) criticized this type of functional consumption. Researchers have often denied the other approaches competitive to their own approaches rather than incorporating them. Character consumption cannot be revealed by such an insulated research stance because consumers would like to consume characters for multidimensional reasons. They consume characters to enhance their utilities. In addition, characters stimulate consumers’ sentiments. The possession desire is satisfied by consuming characters. Possessing character goods can create small interest groups and stimulate communication among the group members. Consuming characters
is assumed to involve multidimensional aspects: functional, conspicuous, and semiotic consumption. As a result, once we try to understand character consumption, we have to employ the multidisciplinary approach in contrast to the unimethodological
paradigm. Through our case study, we revealed the distinctive marketing strategies in the business of characters. It is necessary for
marketers of character goods to regard character consumption as having functional, conspicuous, and semiotic aspects. We can find distinctive characteristics in the market research, product development, advertising, and communication strategies in the process of creating characters.
Ključne riječi
characters; character universe; multidimensional consumptions; character development
Hrčak ID:
132605
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.11.2014.
Posjeta: 1.594 *