Study On Marketing Strategies Of Japanese Comics And Animation Industry

Today, the comics and animation industry, recognized by the international community as the core industry of knowledge economy and a "smoke-free, environment-friendly industry" in the 21st century, has increasingly become the focus of the attention and development of all countries. Comics and animation industry is one of the emerging cultural industries strongly supported by Chinese government, exhibiting enormous potential for development. As an emerging industry of the 21st century, characterized by its fashion, creation, and entertainment-orientation, comics and animation industry has become a new economic growth point of all countries, especially the United States, Japan and South Korea and other developed countries who have realized the importance of the industry. As a main component of the cultural industry, comics and animation industry not only can bring unlimited business opportunities and great benefits to a country and create a number of world famous brands, but also can expand its national culture in a deep and effective way. As to Chinese comics and animation industry, what development model it should follow and how it can develop steadily and healthily have become a very important problem with which Chinese comics and animation industry is confronted.Japan, the world's major comics and animation power, is the pioneer and leader in Asian comics and animation industry. Japanese comics and animation industry shows characteristics of high degree of marketization, large scale, industrialization, and its export value has been much higher than that of steel industry. Asia and even the whole world are exposed to the radiation from Japanese comics and animation culture; certainly, there is no exception for China.In the 1990s, Japanese comics and animation opened the door to China, having trained a group of contemporary Chinese comics and animation fans and promoted the development of Chinese domestic comics and animation industry since then. Chinese animation experienced a golden age in the 1980s, but gradually became weak facing the Japanese animation. On the other hand, Japanese comics are a new art form for China. Without mass base and art base, Chinese comics have long been following the model of imitating Japanese comics. Although Chinese comics and animation industry seems to grow vigorously in recent years with many regions competing to be the first to build comics and animation industry bases and a variety of theme parks, Chinese comics and animation works have small international influence. Compared with the world, Chinese comics and animation industry develops still slowly. Especially under the impact of the United States, Japan, South Korea, the capital investment recovery of Chinese comics and animation industry is relatively slow. At the same time, the lack of a complete industrial chain and good market operation mechanism result in the outflow of animators and developmental lag of Chinese comics and animation industry. Chinese comics and animation have high artistic quality in creation, but a very weak market consciousness. Chinese animators pay more attention to art forms and techniques of works. In the comics and animation art creation, we have reached a relatively high level, but it is not enough in terms of market exploration. Therefore, the potential of Chinese comics and animation market is tremendous, and to promote the development of Chinese comics and animation market is an urgent matter. To exert great efforts to develop comics and animation industry has practical significance for the satisfaction of people's needs for spiritual and cultural products, the promotion of economic development and the enhancement of international competitiveness.Comics and animation enterprises act as the main part of comics and animation industry, whose marketing approaches play a very important role in the development of the industry. Comics and animation marketing focuses on planning, marketing, media marketing of comics and animation works, the development and marketing of derivative products, the integration of the entire comics and animation industry resources, and mobilizing the enthusiasm of all aspects. However, Chinese comics and animation marketing has many problems, unable to meet consumers'growing demand, which seriously affects the overall economic benefits of Chinese comics and animation industry, becoming a weak link in the process of economic development. The purpose of this paper is to learn the successful experience from Japan through the analysis of the marketing strategies adopted by Japanese comics and animation industry, expecting to change the traditional business ideas of Chinese comics and animation enterprises to enhance and develop Chinese culture, to excavate comics and animation elements with national culture characteristics, to explore the development strategies of Chinese comics and animation industry and to improve the competitiveness of Chinese comics and animation enterprises, so as to search for a development path suitable for Chinese comics and animation industry.As to research methods, both normative research method and empirical method have been adopted, striving to combine the theoretical analysis with practical analysis. Relevant domestic and foreign materials were reviewed and induced and deduced in a meticulous way. The integration of theory with practice makes the conclusions more persuasive.This paper is composed of six chapters. Taking Japanese comics and animation industry as the main research object, the paper analyzes the macro-environment which Japanese comics and animation industry is in and marketing strategies adopted by Japanese comics and animation industry in order to have a clear understanding of this industry, thus to draw implications for Chinese comics and animation industry.The first chapter explains the background of the research, purpose and significance of the study, and defines related concepts:comics and animation, comics and animation industry, comics and animation enterprises. The second chapter reviews the development history of comics and animation powers in the world. From the development tendency of worldwide comics and animation industry, comics and animation industry of each country has shown different patterns. The comics and animation industry development levels of each country are unbalanced due to the difference in the starting time and development progress of the comics and animation industry in countries. The United States, Japan and South Korea play a significant role in the global comics and animation industry, and they have basically formed a situation of tripartite confrontation. Therefore, this paper selects the three countries as representatives to elaborate the history of comics and animation industry.PEST (Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Technological) analysis is employed in the third chapter to analyze main external environment elements of Japanese comics and animation industry. The unique macro-environment is the objective reality of Japanese comics and animation industry development. Firstly, Japanese government promotes the development of cultural industry in Japan by using development strategy, development model, laws and regulations, intermediary organizations, capital support and other aspects of the measures, and strengthens the promotion of Japanese comics and animation industry development with incentive mechanism, protection of intellectual property rights and talent cultivation policy. The second part is economic factors. Favorable economic environment, accurate market positioning and export encouragement policy have promoted the development of comics and animation industry and made the commerciality of comics and animation industry always in a dominant position. Thirdly, Japanese unique cultural and social environment are also easy living factors for comics and animation art. The power of modern Japanese culture lies in its statelessness, which endows the Japanese with a peculiar ability not to rigidly adhere to the tradition and magnanimity makes them learn all kinds of foreign cultures and create a fully new culture without Japanese elements. Moreover, the social basis of comics and animation works is quite extensive. Finally, in terms of technology, the popularization and application of "limited-animation" and "paperless animation" techniques and focusing on comics and animation talents training have advanced the development of Japanese comics and animation industry.Chapter four studies the marketing strategies of Japanese comics and animation industry based on 4Ps Marketing Mix theory. In product strategies, comics, animation and derivatives are not only interdependent but mutually enhancing to form a set of complete, mature operating system. The comics is the base of the industry, while animation is the extension and upgrading of the industry, and derivatives such as games, toys and other peripheral products development are the main body of the industry which is also the key to decide whether related enterprises gain profit or not. In pricing strategies, comic magazines use low cost strategy to make comics and animation products have extensive mass base while offprints develop different pricing strategies according to their popularity; TV animations adopt low-cost strategy to improve audience rating; as comics and animation enthusiastic fans'collections, derivatives commonly adopt high pricing strategy. In place strategies, in addition to traditional publishing and broadcasting channels, mobile phone comics and animation and network comics and animation are becoming increasingly popular and occupy more and more market share with the continuously developing new media channels. In terms of derivatives, the marketing strategy of Japanese animation is to supply the animation broadcast copyrights for free at first to establish popularity and favorability in order to expand its influence and seize the market by selling copyrights and delegating dealerships. In promotion strategies, Japanese comics and animation enterprises use advertising on magazines, TV, and Internet, personal selling, experimental marketing and integrated marketing communication tools to pursue their advertising and marketing objectives.In chapter five, comics and animation industries in China and Japan are compared from three aspects:positioning of comics and animation market, innovation of comics and animation works, and establishment of market-based mechanism. Japanese successful experience in terms of comics and animation industry are drawn to explore the development strategy of Chinese comics and animation industry and five proposals are put forward:to accurately position the comics and animation industry; to create a complete comics and animation industry chain and optimize the structure of the comics and animation industry; to improve creativity and cultivate brand image; to cultivate innovative professionals for comics and animation industry; to fight piracy and create a harmonious environment.Chapter six is the concluding chapter, summarizing the whole paper and drawing three conclusions. Firstly, brand has become a very important factor in comics and animation marketing; secondly, comics and animation market needs to be positioned from an overall perspective; thirdly, comics and animation companies can draw on collective wisdom and absorb all useful ideas on marketing strategies and actively expand marketing channels and design innovative marketing plans.At present, no deep and systematic theoretical discussion of comics and animation marketing has been formed at home and abroad. Based on the PEST analysis and marketing mix (4Ps), this paper has tentatively summarized the marketing strategies of Japanese comics and animation industry and made strategic recommendations for Chinese comics and animation industry in light of the actual situation in China.Chinese comics and animation industry, a booming sunrise industry, lags behind compared with other comics and animation powers, which has equipped it with the advantage of backwardness. Advanced management experience and mature market management modes will help us to avoid the detours so as to exert all our strength to develop our original comics and animation industry. China has a long cultural history with thousands years of cultural deposits in addition to abundant human resources and the world's largest consumer groups. Thus, under the leadership of Chinese government, we have the capacity and confidence to establish innovation consciousness and make efforts to build our own comics and animation industry chain with Chinese characteristics. While enriching the cultural life of citizens, we can deeply excavate cultural products with Chinese national characteristics and create brand culture, which will contribute to the expansion of Chinese traditional culture in the world.