The Success Factors of Hallyu with focus on K-Pop

초록

In 2016, the Korean drama, “The Descendants of the Sun” reached 38.8% rating in Korea. In China, it was streamed simultaneously on iQIYI and recorded over 2.7 billion views. This drama is a good example of Hallyu, a phenomenon which have been around for 20 years. Many say that Hallyu started when What is Love all about? aired in CCTV in 1997. Following the popularity of Korean Dramas, K-Pop (Korean Pop Music) started to gain recognition. Notably, the boy group H.O.T. performed at sold-out concert in Beijing in February 2000. Super Junior, Big Bang and EXO have over 10 million combined followers in the social network site nowadays. Hallyu had number of positive impacts both culturally and economically on Korea. Reviewing the history of the Hallyu especially K-Pop, the number of success factors were studied. Some scholars used the model to evaluate the national advantage while other scholars used cultural diamond to evaluate production and consumption aspects. All of the studies have legitimate findings, but other aspects including external environment and customer centric market needed to be also taken into consideration. In this article, 4C marketing mix which fits better with online focused environment was used to evaluate K-Pop in customer centric market while number of external issues were reviewed. Further the importance of understanding the global fans was stressed to contemplate about regional strategy moving on. Finally, critical elements for future success of Hallyu and K-Pop were suggested.

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