hello kitty

When, in 1974, employees at the Japanese design company

Sanrio created Hello Kitty, the small, rounded cartoon cat with a
red bow between her ears and no mouth, they could never have
dreamt that she would become the global megastar she is today.
Sales of Hello Kitty merchandise now account for half of Saniro's
$1bn (£500m) annual turnover and her face adorns 50,000
products, sold in more than 60 countries. The little half-
Japanese, half-English cat has become so globally recognisable
that it is, perhaps, inevitable that the Japanese board of tourism
has appointed her their official tourism ambassador to China
and Hong Kong. This is not the first time the world has looked to
Hello Kitty to perform an ambassadorial role; she has been
United States children's ambassador for Unicef since 1983. Dr
Sharon Kinsella, a lecturer at Oxford University on

Japanese sociology, thinks that Japan's choice of Hello Kitty as

their representative is unsurprising. "It seems predictable enough
to have her adopted as a diplomatic envoy," she says. "That has
been the way of the 'Cool Japan' bandwagon for a few years
now, and relations with China are no healthier. It seems a bit
farcical to select Hello Kitty, however: as if a dumbed-down
cultural icon that was cool in her retro boom in the 1990s, and
which Chinese teenagers dig, can somehow do something
significant to alter the gnarly and difficult state of China-Japan
relations." Hello Kitty's creator started out as the Japanese
equivalent of Hallmark cards. Sanrio was founded by Shintaro
Tsuji in 1960; Tsuji, a qualified chemist, lost his mother when he
was 13 and spent an unhappy childhood with reluctant relatives.
He attended a kindergarten run by a Canadian missionary and
saw for the first time the custom of birthdays, which were not
traditionally celebrated in Japan. He decided he would use his
company to foster the culture of gift-giving. As an experiment in
1971, in the wake of student riots, the company began

INTRODUCTION

Hello kitty is a cartoon character of a small cat that looks kind

and cute, with a button nose, two black dot-yes, six whiskers and
a ribbon or flower in her hair. Hello kitty has no mouth and this
represents a major source of emotional association for buyers
and buyers can project many different feelings onto the little cat.
Owners and their cat can be happy, sad, thoughtful or any other
feeling the user wish to feel.

Hello Kitty was firstly introduced in japan in 1974 and was

brought to the united state in 1976. Hello kitty is a segment of
Japanese popular culture and hello kitty is a Japanese bobtail
cat also knows as kitty white. Currently hello kitty is 39 years of
age, at the age of 36 sanrio has introduce hello kitty in to a global
market, hello kitty trademark is worth over 5 billion annually.

Competitive analysis Part A

Barbie doll is a fictional character, born on March 1959. First

introduced as the original fashion model, Barbie doll has since
had more than 130 careers, represented more than 40 different
nationalities and collaborated with more than 75 different
fashion designers. Through out the years, the Barbie brand has
evolved with girls, extending into entertainment, online and has
45 different consumer products categories. Barbie has TV
commercials, cartoons and celebrity gossip magazine . Barbie
dolls is a very successful brand allover the world but most
especially in America it is number one brand when it comes to
Barbie dolls.

The difference between Barbie doll and Hello Kitty is the fact that

Barbie doll has more popular and better options and more
customer base, when it comes to young teenage girls. Barbie
doll let kids