The Relationship Marketing Strategies of Musical theaters in Japan
Despite the continued economic recession in Japan, there are some businesses that have maintained high profit margins and consumer demand. One such business is the theater, notably musicals, which provide high quality performances and stages. Gekidanshiki, a musical production company which has stunned Japanese audiences with high quality, translated Broadway musicals, and Takaratzuka, known for employing single, females only since its origin in 1912, as well as for creating the Star System. Both operate their own theaters and have multiple casts for each musical, which grants the audience choices as to what they will watch ¡V 5 at Takaratzuka, and 10 at Genkidanshiki. Moreover, both have also created special groups consisiting of core fans who act as liaisons between the theater and the audience, providing promotion for the theater and communicating the desires of the audiences back to the theater for no charge above and beyond being part of the theater community.
Traditionally, communication between the theaters and the audiences is one way; theaters would cease promotions until a new production was in the works. Recently, the importance of two way communication between the theater and audience has been realized, and yet the intercommunication is still not effective. The Japanese theaters, however, have developed their own methods for instituting two way communication that is quite effective and provides the theaters with much needed promotion, feedback, and, as a result, consumers. The process the Japanese have created revolves around 3 steps:
The first step is Awareness of the Theater; the theater must takes chances to contact audiences outside the expected demographic ¡V such as the Japanese providing free theater for the working class on occasion in order to get them interested in the theater, as well have a specific, recognizable operating system (Ensemble or Star System) and style of performance.
The second step is Quality of Onstage Performance, which consists of actors and hard equipment. The actors can be dealt with by a system of education that can both satisfy the need for new faces and an objective review system of the actors. The hard equipment must be dealt with by high expense, not only in the area of onstage equipment, but also offstage; in Japan, some of the theaters, have special rooms for mothers to watch with their children where they do not have to worry about a child¡¦s crying disturbing others, or a daycare center so that housewives can come to the theater and not have to worry about their children.
Finally, the most important step is to increase the frequency of consumption of performances. For any stationary theater, without the option to change location to gain a fresh audience new to the performances, maintaining, and, hopefully, increasing the consumers is the top priority. In Japan, the theaters have continued survive and their audiences consist of both faithful consumers and new consumers as well through a clever marketing strategy that is self-motivated. The Japanese theaters select volunteers from among their regular audiences who then become official members of the theater as theater advisors ¡V although, these theater advisors receive no pay ¡V and these theater advisors act as word-of-mouth promoters and also bring back the desires of the audience community so that the theaters may better respond to and meet those desires. Also, the theater advisors are selected by the theaters on the basis of the demographic they can best communicate with and the area they live in. Because all of the theater advisors are volunteers, the entire group is self-motivated, and harder working than a paid individual might be.
I would like to both introduce the practical ¡§relationship¡¨ marketing strategies taken by Japanese theaters and review the history of these strategies in order to identify the key points that render them effective, and, in turn, the Japanese theater such a lucrative business. Finally, I would like to review the situation of Taiwanese theaters, and try to identify the reasons for the weakening of the operation of Taiwanese theaters. Most of the Taiwanese theaters are quite new and weighed down by financial problems that originate from the source of the target audience. Also, these theaters are lacking in the experience and knowledge necessary to construct the means of intercommunication between the theaters and the audiences. For Taiwanese theater to survive, it is urgent for them to take actions that will help create, perpetuate, and expand their market. By reviewing the actions of the Japanese theaters, specifically the Gekidanshiki and Taratzuka, I hope that the research will stimulate useful and new thinking in the field of the musical market.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0903103-163919 |
| Date | 03 September 2003 |
| Creators | KU, HSIAO-JUNG |
| Contributors | Lu Yuen-yen, none, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0903103-163919 |
| Rights | off_campus_withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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