Crafted, wrapped, and attracted: Love letter packaging that captured the hearts of land of the Rising Sun. Case Goodio.

The Japanese market is renowned for its uniqueness - a one-of-a-kind in the world, and Japanese consumers are known for demanding and having some of the highest product quality standards in the world. Therefore, the localization process of a brand or products has been the key feature in dictating whether the product will succeed in attracting Japanese consumers. The purpose of the research was to study the packaging as a part of product adaptation in Japanese consumer market. The objective of this study was to generate information for companies, using the perspective of the Japanese consumer market, so that they can understand Japan’s cultural requirements and consumer market expectations regarding product packaging design in the context of product adaptation. The Japanese cultural context was raised in the study for special consideration. The study also utilized a case company, a Finnish raw chocolate manufacturer, whose product packaging has aroused interest in the Japanese consumer market The qualitative data of the research was carried out mainly by qualitative methods. Empirical data were collected in two ways. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with three expert interviewees, all of whom are connected to Goodio and the Japanese consumer market. Second, structural consumer interviews were conducted with thirty interviewees to map the consumer market perspective of the study. Based on the findings, product packaging played a pivotal role in consumer’s purchase decision. Packaging was expected to be attractive, high-quality and go hand-in-hand with the price. Product packaging was expected to contain elements such as use of colour codes, imagery, high-quality material, and functionality. Furthermore, adaptation tools in product adaptation were identified. In addition, the study provided significant new insights into cultural characteristics of the Japanese consumer market. The results of the study can be applied more extensively to different product groups that are interested in the Japanese consumer market. In addition to the practical benefits of the research will provide completely new information on the expectations of the Japanese consumer market for product packaging and product adaptation, as well as to present potential topics for further research.Japanin kuluttajamarkkinat ovat tunnettuja ainutlaatuisuudestaan, jossa tuotteiden laatustandardit ovat korkeimpia maailmassa. Lokalisointi sekä tuoteadaptaatio ovat nousseet avainasemaan, pohdittaessa, onnistuuko tuote houkuttelemaan japanilaisia kuluttajia puoleensa. Japanilaisten kuluttajien suuren maksukyvyn, sekä tuotteiden massiivisen tarjonnan vuoksi, tuotepakkauksesta on tullut merkittävä markkinointiviestinnän väline kuluttajan ostopäätöksessä. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli analysoida tuotepakkausta osana tuoteadaptaatiota Japanin kuluttajamarkkinoilla. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus jaettiin kolmeen osaongelmaan: mitkä ovat Japanin kuluttajamarkkinoiden kulttuuriset ominaisuudet, mitkä ovat Japanin markkinoiden kulttuuriset vaatimukset tuoteadaptaatiolle sekä millaisia odotuksia japanilaisilla kuluttajilla on tuotepakkauksen elementeille. Tutkimuksessa hyödynnettiin tutkimustapauksena suomalaista raakasuklaayritys Goodiota, jonka pakkaus on kerännyt kehuja Japanin kuluttajamarkkinoilla. Ilmiötä lähestyttiin ensin aikaisemman tieteellisen kirjallisuuden ja tutkimuksen avulla. Teoriakatsauksessa perehdyttiin Japanin kulttuurikontekstiin, tuoteadaptaation kilpailuvälineisiin, japanilaisten kuluttajakäyttäytymiseen ja tuotepakkauksen elementteihin. Tämän jälkeen tehtiin laadullinen tutkimus, jossa tapausyrityksenä toimi Goodio ja tämän Japanin markkinat. Aineisto kerättiin haastatteluin: kolme puolistrukturoitua asiantuntijahaastattelua sekä kolmekymmentä strukturoitua kuluttajahaastattelua 25–40-vuotiaiden japanilaisten parissa. Tutkimuksen mukaan tuotepakkaus on erittäin tärkeä osa kuluttajan ostopäätöstä. Pakkauksen oletetaan olevan korkealaatuinen ja viehättävä, sekä sen oletetaan ’kävelevän käsi kädessä’ tuotteen hinnan kanssa. Tuotepakkauksessa oletetaan olevan myös japanilaisille tärkeitä elementtejä, kuten värien ja kuvien asianmukainen käyttö, korkealaatuinen materiaali ja toiminnallisuus. Lisäksi tässä tutkimuksessa määriteltiin kulttuuristen vaatimusten ohella kilpailukykyiset työkalut. Näiden lisäksi tutkimus tarjosi merkittävää uutta tietoa kuluttajamarkkinoiden kulttuurisista ominaisuuksista. Tämä tutkimus luo uutta tutkimustietoa tulevaisuuden käyttötarkoituksia varten. Jos ulkomaalainen yritys osaa käyttää näitä kulttuurisidonnaisia pakkauselementtejä oikein tuotepakkauksessaan, tämän katsotaan olevan hyödyksi tuoteadaptaatiossa Japanin kuluttajamarkkinoilla

Selling Kawaii in Advertising: Testing Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Kawaii Appeals

Kawaii (cute) culture has become a major global consumer culture. Advertisers in Asia have adopted kawaii appeals to attract attention and promote product images. From a cultural value perspective, this literature review proposes that culture not only affects ad content and appeal, but also influences consumer attitude and ad effects. While kawaii appeals are culturally specified, the effects of those appeals across distinct cultures might be systemically predictable. Today, the concept of kawaii and its effects still remains vague to Western academia. This thesis provides a deeper understanding of kawaii examining the rich origin of kawaii culture in Japan and its expansion and globalization as a dominant consumer culture. Online surveys using specifically designed stimuli were administrated to respondents from both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. The thesis thus develops a theoretical definition for kawaii within the advertising appeal context and a measurement scheme for utilizing its multidimensional composite constructs. Based on the self-congruity hypothesis, it is argued that culturally shaped self-construals affect responses to ads employing kawaii appeals. Kawaii appeals which stress interdependence should be more persuasive among consumers with self-construals congruent with the message. Findings suggested that kawaii appeals were perceived to be friendlier in both United States and China, while consumers with domain interdependent self-construal expressed stronger self-brand connection, more favorable ad attitude and purchase intention toward the kawaii ads

Maiden’s Fashion As Eternal Becomings: Victorian Maidens and Sugar Sweet Cuties Donning Japanese Street Fashion in Japan and North America

Lolita fashion is a youth street style originating from Japan that draws on Victorian-era children’s clothing, Rococo aesthetics, and Western Punk and Gothic subculture. It is worn by teenage girls and women of a wide range of ages, and through the flow of related media and clothing aided by the Internet, Lolita style has become a global phenomenon. Wearers of the style are known as Lolitas, and local, national, and global communities can be found around the world outside Japan from North American to Europe. This study is a cross-cultural comparison of Lolita fashion wearers in Japan and North America, examining how differences in constructions of place and space; conceptualizations about girlhood and womanhood; perceptions of beauty and aesthetics; and formation of social groups and actor-networks have bearing on how an individual experiences the fashion. This work deconstructs Lolita style by using Japanese cultural concepts like shōjo (‘girl’ as a genderless being), otome (maiden), kawaii (cuteness) to explore the underlying framework that informs Japanese Lolita’s use of the fashion as a form of subversive rebellion, creating personal spaces to celebrate their individuality and revive the affects and memories of girlhood that are distanced from gendered social expectations. English-speakers, not having the same social and cultural knowledge, attempt to recontexualize Lolita fashion along the lines of feminism, sisterhood, personal style, and escape from the ‘modern’ to give meaning and purpose to their involvement with the fashion. Lolita fashion allows wearers to travel in between the lines of becoming-girl and becoming-women by offering a way to access girl-feeling and its associated happiness objects

A Socio-Marketing Analysis Of The Concept Of Cute And Its Consumer Culture Implications

Cute has become the favored language of (the predominantly female) popular consumer culture. This paper examines the roots of “cute” and its evolution with reference to its relevance to marketers. We follow the cultural appropriation of Japan’s “Kawaii” by the Western “cute”, and introduce a social, marketing-oriented description and analysis of the concept. We present its socio-cultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological relevance to consumption in general, and to consumer culture theory in particular. This examination steers clear of scientific generalizations prevalent in consumer behavior research and aims, instead, to illuminate the cultural dimensions of the consumption cycle, and allow a better understanding of what it is like to form social attachment and loyalty in the context of cute consumption and consumer culture theory. Especially interesting questions arise regarding the trans-social acculturating elements of cute, as well as the apparent mainstreaming (cultural appropriation) of the cute Asian subculture into the dominant Western consumer and material cultures

Circling the cute-kawaii: following a fugitive affect through planetary modernisms

Emerging out of three current critical trends in literary studies broadly and modernist studies specifically, this dissertation intervenes in the scholarly discourse surrounding the distinctly modern aesthetic-affect of the cute-kawaii. Firstly, drawing on Susan Stanford-Friedman’s conception of modernisms as decentered and disjunctive “planetary” phenomena, it situates the cute-kawaii neither entirely within the 20th century English and American, nor Japanese contexts but attempts to articulate cute-kawaii as affect obtaining in both. Secondly, its methodology participates in the “post-critical” turn in literary studies. Rather than deploying a “suspicious” hermeneutics it attempts what Anne Cheng calls a “hermeneutics of susceptibility,” in which analysis is not dispassionate, but intensely invested in its object. Lastly, the dissertation is theoretically grounded by the affective turn in literary studies, and in particular Brian Massumi’s conception of “affect” as fundamentally ethical in its orientation away from a subject and towards others. Its trajectory tracks iterations of common cute-kawaii tropes as they appear in Japanese, British, and American modernist novels which either explicitly invoke the cute-kawaii, as with James Joyce’s cute rats, or are implicated in the media ecosystems through which those tropes circulate as in the case of Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi. Ultimately, the aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that the cute-kawaii, which has previously been understood as an insidious commodity aesthetic, is better understood as an affective experience with ethical import. In particular, the cute-kawaii is an experience of the ambiguity of the human and non-human, self and world, and significance and signification

Japanese media cultures in Japan and abroad: Transnational consumption of manga, anime, and media-mixes

Reprinted Special issue of ARTS (2018

An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Exploring African American Women’s Perceptions of Access to Healthcare in the Midwest

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study was to explore access to healthcare through the lens and lived experiences of African American Women (AAW) in Midwestern towns throughout the United States. African American women and other people of low socio-economic backgrounds continue to live with poorer health outcomes than many of their counterparts African American Women experience barriers to healthcare from a unique perspective than their White counterparts. Although medical professionals endeavor to attain equal treatment among each of their patients, significant healthcare disparities are prevalent among AAW Commonly recognized ethnic stereotypes are not always intentionally supported, however, their mere existence shapes how information about a person is processed and can result in unintentional prejudices in decision-making. This well-known phenomenon is commonly referred to as implicit bias. Systemic structural obstacles and different methods of marginalization as described above, continue to plague and limit AAW’s access to quality healthcare in their neighborhoods. This research considered these factors in addition to the access to culturally competent healthcare providers and their ability to address known mental and physical health disparities among AAW through qualitative interviews