The Application Of Cultural Symbols In International Marketing Strategy

With China’s economic construction on a new journey,cultural confidence has become an important issue of the times.Chinese cultural symbols such as opera,papercutting and traditional Chinese characters have broken through the cultural circle and become important elements in building brand image.However,unlike WeChat,Huawei and other Internet and technology brands,China’s retail,apparel,beverages and other ’soft brands’ that are closely related to life still have a great lack of development.2017,the new Chinese national style tea brand Chagee was established in China’s Yunnan Province,and in 2018 set up an overseas business unit to explore the Southeast Asian More than 60 stores have been opened in Malaysia,Singapore,Thailand and other countries,becoming the largest brand in the field of Chinese style tea in Southeast Asia.As one of the few brands that go abroad with Chinese tea culture characteristics,Chagee relies on Chinese cultural symbols to carry out marketing activities,convey the image and culture of the country of origin,create brand characteristics and enhance consumer stickiness.Its cultural symbols marketing strategy is representative and groundbreaking,and has research value.Based on this,this paper takes Chagee as the research object,analyzes the content of its cultural symbol marketing strategy through literature analysis method,case study method and semi-structured interview method,explores its advantages while analyzing the existing problems and tries to propose an optimization plan.In reviewing the existing literature,the author found that the academic research on the application of symbols in cultural marketing strategy is limited,and most of them focus on the analysis of the signifier,i.e.,brand image,product style,etc.,and lack of systematic analysis of the whole cultural symbolic marketing model.Therefore,based on the existing literature on semiotics and cultural marketing,this paper combines AISAS marketing model and Roland Barthes’ semiotics theory with reference to the characteristics of case companies and relevant data information,constructs a 5*4 cultural symbolic marketing explanation model,which mainly includes Attention,Interest,Search,Action,and Share as horizontal dimensions,and three vertical dimensions of a secondary system of symbolic referents.Through the advantage of being a Thai language learner,the author obtained first-hand research notes and interviews with Thai consumers,store operators,and Malaysian consumers,and compiled secondary information such as official websites and media reports to summarize the cultural symbolic marketing strategy of Chagee in more detail and depth.In terms of Attention,the brand logo with opera elements and the product name with classical Chinese connotation make consumers feel the symbols behind the Chinese opera art,classical poetry and painting art,and then feel the diversity and inclusiveness of Chinese culture in the connotation system;In terms of Interest,through the historical content such as Farewell My Concubine and The Ancient Road of Tea Horses as the brand story and the brand culture,consumers can understand the Chinese people’s excellence in products and the vision of promoting communication,and the increasing cultural selfconfidence of the Chinese people conveyed behind the brand.In terms of search,by adding the intangible cultural elements like paper-cutting in the promotion posters and videos,combined with the local expressions of Southeast Asia,Chagee shows the reference of China’s absorption and borrowing from other national cultures,as well as the idea of’harmony’ in the connotation system,reducing the cultural distance between the company and the consumers.In terms of action,through the marketing of the five senses of consumers,the Chinese teahouse is created to show the meaning of ’tea culture’.In the aspect of share,the brand promotes the concept of ’Meeting friends with tea’ and creates a social scene in the store,reflecting the concept of sharing that Chinese culture attaches importance to and,finally,seeks the collectivist idea shared between Chinese and Southeast Asian cultures to stimulate consumers’ voluntary behavior and cultivate potential consumers.Although Chagee through cultural symbol marketing,and constantly deepen its China’s tea brand image,to create a core competitiveness of the difference between other brands,but the current form and content of marketing still exists some problems such as cultural symbols fragmentation use in scene,less interaction with consumers,narrow marketing channels and other deficiencies.By integrating the data information,semistructured interview results and successful experience of other brands,the author try to put forward suggestions for improvement.This paper analyzes the content of the cultural symbols marketing strategy of Chagee and refines the cultural symbols marketing explanation model with reference significance.In terms of attention,brands can choose appropriate external expressions of cultural symbols to highlight brand characteristics and leave a unique impression on consumers;in terms of interest,by expanding the dimension of cultural symbols to let culture penetrate into the brand story,product design and other aspects,brands can form brand content that distinguishes them from other homogeneous product brands;in terms of search,brands can combine the cultural symbols of the country of origin and the overseas market In the search aspect,brands can combine the cultural symbols of the source country and the overseas market to reduce the cultural distance between brands and consumers in international marketing and reduce cultural friction;in the action aspect,brands can enrich consumers’ consumption experience and increase the core competitiveness of products by infiltrating cultural symbols into the whole process of consumers’ consumption cycle;in the share aspect,brands can use the common cultural values of the source country and the target market to stimulate consumers’ word-of-mouth propaganda behavior,so that Consumers can implement sharing behavior on their own while deeply understanding and recognizing the connotation of brand cultural symbols.The strategy explanation model can provide new ideas for other national brands going abroad to design marketing activities,and has certain practical significance.