Study On Shaolin Culture Branding In Contrast With Commercial Brand

The Songshan Shaolin Temple is a religious community. It exists for more than 1500 years and is known worldwide for its extraordinary meditation techniques. The temple's history and culture represents a unique combination of Buddhism, meditation, martial arts and Chinese medicine. Shaolin culture brand has gone through a tortuous process from laissez-faire stage to a benign and healthy development stage. The experiences and lessons of this case can be helpful to the establishment and maturity of traditional culture brand.The researchers hold different definitions of "what is a brand". In general, the concept of "brand" combined by three levels. In legal, it is the trademark protected by state law; for the owners, it means the intangible properties; as to consumer, it stands for the information of product features, benefits, cultural meanings and ideology. The commercial "brand" is the combination of all these three levels, and it covers the spheres of Culture, Law and regulation and Economy.Cultural brand shares many similarities with common commercial brand. Comparing with the commercial brand, the traditional culture brand origins from definite cultural conception, so it has distinguishing features. According to this, in this dissertation, the author is engaged in adopting the commercial brand management method to the development of traditional cultural brand, verifying the applicability of the theory in traditional cultural branding, and also proposing the particularity of traditional culture brand.From a culture view, the traditional and folk culture (hereinafter referred to as the traditional culture) could arouse the identity recognization, and also serve as culture resource for culture industry. It's an important way to inherit and develop national and traditional culture to promote the development of cultural industry. In the process of industrialization, because the market and culture follow the different rules, traditional culture is often hurt for misuse. How to keep a balance between economic benefits and social benefits is a significant issue. According to the relationship between culture product and culture resource, there are two problems needed to answer. The first one is how to deal with trademark's exclusive privilege and the mass culture inherent. The second one is what can we do to exploit the culture resources and not to superficialize the valuable culture. There is no general acceptable program by now.To the already settled cultural brand, these two problems are unavoidable. It needs to clarify the ownership of trademark, and then make sure the cultural brand prosper in the market. Assume cultural brand as common commercial brand, the two problems could be resolved through brand management, which is a procedure of setting up, maintaining, and strengthening brand equity, to make the produce behavior and products reflect the core value of brand, increase the loyalty of customers. Following the rules of brand management, the two problems are not irresolvable. But, we must hold in mind that culture brands are not common commercial brands. Though they cannot be treated in the same way, cultural brand can get suggestions and valuable experience from commercial brand management.This dissertation is divided into seven parts.The first part is about the reason for the author to choose this theme, and the relevant research in academic field. In the second part, the author introduces the basic concept of common commercial brand and branding, then explains the reasons for contrast with commercial brand theory.The third part is the depiction of the procedure which Shaolin Culture turned into famous culture brand. First, the author introduces information of the Shaolin Temple and Shaolin Culture compared with other temples in China. On the stand of Shaolin kungfu, Shaolin Culture forms the brand of its own successfully. Author also pays attention to the disputation of the ownership of Shaolin as trademark.The fourth part displays the dynamic management and the practice of the Shaolin culture brand. This includes the protection, position, product line extension, communication, and international relationship.After several years of developing, the Shaolin culture brand takes great amount of changes. In the fifth part, the author introduces the beneficiation and the limitation of it. In the sixth part, it's the theory exploration based on this case. the procedure of traditional culture branding includes three steps, which is creating cultural brand, legally obtaining the ownership of the trademark, then economically making use of and developing the cultural brand.Traditional culture brand has particularity in position, extension and communication. Supervision is needed for traditional culture branding. The seventh part is conclusion of the dissertation.