On The Stride Of Modernization Of Traditional Regional Brand: Taking The Jinhua Ham For An Example

Our splendid history has created a great number of traditional regional brands, which are full of local color. They present Chinese people's national spirit and historical culture, as well as presenting the cultural and historical connotations in the particular districts. Containing the unique ethos, ideology, imagination and cultural consciousness of Chinese people, the regional brands tell the vitality and creativity of Chinese people. Therefore, they are an important part of our nation's culture industry and their intangible assets are beyond evaluation and calculation. In recent years, both the central and local governments have strengthened the protection and development of cultural industry, such as promulgating policies like "Culture Development Program during the National 11th Five-Year Plan Period", "Plan on Reinvigoration of the Cultural Industry" and so on. However, the modernization process of the traditional regional brands are not optimistic. On one hand, their good images will produce "halo effect". The local production enterprises and even some non-originating enterprises, take advantage of traditional regional brands'influence to solicit business, which leads to the traditional regional brands' falling off in quality, as well as their losing credit with the consumers. Such devaluation of the brands causes the "common tragedy" in the use of the traditional regional brands.On the other hand, with China's accession to the WTO, the market becomes open further. Thus, Chinese traditional regional brands are hit by the wave of foreign strong culture and various new culture. Especially, in the strong impact of market economy, they gradually lose original survival soil and social environment. At present, the production of the products with traditional regional brands still take manual operation as their main mode. Such products are conservative in appearance and lack of modern flavor. Besides, being lack of market consciousness and innovation consciousness, the enterprises seldom do some changing in production, so that such products are hard to satisfy the ever-changing market needs. The colorful products and people's changing in consumption demands in modern times make some products with traditional regional brands overshadowed.Traditional district brand crisis is not only economic phenomenon, but also cultural phenomenon. Related enterprise, trade associations and local governments need to cooperate with each other closely to promote the development of the traditional regional brand. First of all, efforts should be taken in the protection of the brands'certificate of origin and intangible cultural heritage, as well as in the exploitation of the historical and cultural values of the brands, such as holding exposition and cultural celebration, building museums, and strengthening the combination of cultural tourism, cultural industry and traditional regional brand. Thus, to promote cultural diffusion of the traditional regional brand. Secondly, the local government should increase its support to traditional industry development, promote industrial cluster and strengthen the supervision and administration of traditional regional brand. Moreover, related enterprise must carry on reform and innovation, establish modern enterprise management system and intensify the invest in technical research and product innovation. Being market-oriented, they should active in developing high value-added products so as to satisfy the diversified and multi-level needs of modern people and finally realize the modernization of traditional regional brand. Combining with the case of Jinhua Ham, this paper analyses the advantages anddisadvantages of the traditional regional brand, summarizes the crisis and opportunities that traditional regional brand face with during its modernization, and puts forward some suggestions on the modernization of traditional regional brand. Conclusions are made that: 1) The modernization of traditional regional brand can take advantage of its long history, rich culture and its regional symbolism.2) From the perspective of market environment, traditional regional brand has such crucial resources as the popularity of the brand, the national protection policy, the regional protection policy, the policy of cultural heritage protection, and the promotion of culture and tourist industry and so on, which actually provide an optimal environment for its modernization.3) The study based on the analysis of Jinhua Ham is supposed to make some contribution to the research of the development of industries with tradional regional brand in our country.