Japan als Marke : die Nutzung kultureller Faktoren in japanischen Vermarktungsstrategien

Japan as Brand - The Usage of Cultural Images in Japanese Marketing Strategies

In times of globalization and fusing markets, the need for marketing strategists to come up with ever new and enticing ideas to increase the brand value of their products grows. One approach to differentiate exports on a global market is to merge the product images with images of the country they have derived from. This technique, called "country of origin effect" is gaining momentum, and advertisement catchphrases like "German engineering" or "welcome to Marlboro country" are well known. In 2005, threatened by more and more successful Asian competitors in the global market, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry started a campaign called Japanesque Modern, aiming to create an overall brand image for exports based on traditional Japanese culture. This article firstly introduces the main ideas of the Japanesque Modern campaign against the background of the development of Japanese export images from WWII until today. Secondly, it examines discussions of the notion of a traditional Japanese culture in the field of cultural studies. The intention is to give an idea of the risks and chances that this approach contains.