The Globalisation of East Asian Pop Music in the West and the East

If a company wants to expand their product, in this case the Asian Pop music, they have to make decisions including the decision about scale of the entry, which refers to the commitment, the timing of their entry and above all the strategy they want to conduct to succeed in the foreign market. But first of all they have to find the market, they want to target and therefore enter. In recent years Asian record companies decided whether on concentrating on their strong and growing home markets as well as neighbouring markets, or entering mature western markets such as the U.S., which is one the one hand a big market, but on the other hand a difficult one for Asian products due to the significant differences in the language, culture and customer preferences.

While their target markets regarding the diverse directions differed fundamentally, the entry mode and the strategy of music firms that entered either the East or the West were quite similar. The entry mode was usually a cross-border partnership, especially in Asia. In Asia record or in general music companies joined a partnership with a company originally located in a different Asian market. Both companies benefited from each others experiences, knowledge and core capabilities. An example for such an entry mode is the partnership of the Japanese Avex and the South Korean SM entertainment. SM provided the talented South Korean artist and Avex the marketing power, distribution channels as well as the market knowledge in Japan. Usually the product the foreign firm entered the international market with was adapted to the differences in language to accommodate the taste of the foreign customers. Thus, most Asian music companies applied the localisation strategy on a small scale to meet the customer’s preferences in the other Asian countries.

The same strategy was applied by Asian companies that focused on markets such as the U.S. market. In the mentioned example, the South Korean artist was bilingual and therefore able to sing in Japanese, which made it easier to market him in the Japanese market. In this case the localisation strategy was applied on a small scale. The artist was singing in Japanese, but his South Korean style of music and identity was not customised to the culture differences of the new market. A similar strategy was applied by companies that focused on the American market. An example is the South Korean YG entertainment. Despite of joining a partnership with an U.S. music company, YG hired popular native producers to support their artists and therefore tried to adapt and benefit from the producers knowledge and awareness level in the foreign market. They also applied the localisation strategy by training their artists to sing in the language of the foreign market, dance American hip hop and dress up the way Americans did. Accordingly YG entertainment adapted their artist to the