Mooncake Marketing Strategy. Symbolic Consumption Patterns Under Study

The moon cake, nowadays in the common people's daily life, has been beyond the category of the pure food. Instead, not only is it both the spiritual representation of people's best wishes and objectfised form of the cultural capital, but also the moon cake displays indications of symbolic consumption increasingly. More as a consumption sign which is endowed with symbolic value by marketing tools like advertisement and packing, the purchase of the moon cake realiszes its symbolic consumption. While products trending to homogeneity, with the severe competition in the market, the focus of marketing care is how to improve the symbolical value of the product, attracting the consumers.The enterprises should try their best to improve the symbolical value of the product, shaping it to be the symbolical sign.Therefore, it means a lot to systemically analyze the connotations and expression forms of its symbolic consumption, as well as the research about the reasons of it appears and the way it actualizes. Most important, we should constitute the corresponding marketing strategy to promote the sales.The beginning of this article expataites the connotations and expression forms of the its symbolic consumption. Then this article interprets the reasons why the moon cake's symbolic consumption can appear from the social and cultural area. First, under the social background of sign consumption, the consumption's form has transfered from goods consumption to sign consumption and every goods is consumed in the form of a sign. Second, as the impersonal state of the cultural capital, the moon cake can be converted into the economical capital.Third, as a present, the moon cake is taken as a tool to maintain social relations and express emotions. Fourth, based on the unique Chinese unsequent pattern in the social organization structure, the moon cake's symbolic consumption takes distinct looks on the diaplaying forms.After explaining the moon cake's consumption characters, this article analyses the realization of the moon cake's symbolic consumption with the help of Macrachan's meaning-transfer model. This article proposes that in the stages of the product's manufacture and sell advertisement, media and packing design endow the product with the symbolic value while it is transformed to the field of the consumers through these three forms in the stage of consuming.In this paper, the author proposes that enhancing moon cake's symbolic value and promoting its products sales is the key to the moon cake marketing. Moon cake not only symbolizes the identity of the consumer, reflects their consumption ability, but also becomes a good choice as the gift for kinds of visiting or cooperation. Consumption on moon cake has been concentrating in high-level gradually. In order to satisfy the different requirement of consumers,manufacturing enterprise and sales company should develop appropriate product strategy according to different markets in different levels. On products pricing, the psychological strategy can be adopted, because it's a good way to enhance the products'value, to increase their profits and demonstrate the consumers'taste.The channel strategy should locate in the present expends. The marketing of Moon cake should locating in gift consumption, developing channels, conquering group purchase and personal consumption market; Moon cakes promotion should focus on reasonable blend, guiding the emotion of consumer. Among them, given priority to the family, love, friendship in the emotional appeal, in order to create a happy, sweet, warm and wishful feeling about the gift, and the rational request to highlight the expensive and luxury variety arrangement, and symbol the deep friendship between givers and receivers.A trend in moon cake marketing is to create good quality and to find out a carrier of emotion and culture for the products, then finally to create a strong brand with sympathetic emotion, profound culture, and distinctive characters.