Wednesday, December 1, 2010

"Disney" in a modern society

Disneyization means the homogenous of consumption, merchandising, emotional labour and theming. It could also means to turn the place into a more tourist-friendly whereby everything can be found in one particular place. For example shopping, sightseeing, or anything that a tourists would do can be found in a place, its disneyization.

One example would be Lotte World. Lotte World Seoul is actually a theme park which is divided into two sectors, the outdoor and the indoor theme park. The indoor theme park, Adventure” is actually linked with Lotte Department Store and Lotte Hotel. A folk museum whereby it showcases the traditional korean culture is also available there and besides all that, one is able to play ice-skating in Lotte World because a ice ring is located in there too. Visitors is able to fulfill their accommodation, shopping, eating and learning of culture in just the place. In addition, inside Lotte World, one is able to purchase merchandising that represents Lotte World Seoul and all these merchandises shops are located everywhere in Lotte World like they are attracting the visitors to go in and buy them. Besides all these, Lotte World also celebrate festivals in the place. For example, they are going to have a christmas celebration in the theme park during Christmas Day.

With all these available, one do not have to fear of nothing to do if they do not like to play in the theme parks because one is able to experience lots of different things in just Lotte World.




• Theming – clothing institutions or objects in a narrative that is largely unrelated to the institution or object to which it is applied, such as a casino or restaurant with a Wild West narrative.

Insadong is the largest traditional art maerket available in Seoul. The theming for the Insadong is that it is based largely on the traditional arts on South Korea which is very much different from how the normal shopping is like. And in order to attract customers, which stores have to design their shop as unique as possible.

• Merchandising – the promotion and sale of goods in the form of or bearing copyright images and/or logos, including such products made under licence.

Due to the increase in demand for Korean pop, Korean are selling merchandises that have various Korean band’s picture printed on it. For example by having them printed on mugs, clothes etc. Beside Korean pop, the uses of korea’s flag printed on the merchandises so as to promote South Korea.

• Performative labour – the growing tendency for frontline service work to be viewed as a performance, especially one in which the deliberate display of a certain mood is seen as part of the labour involved in service work.

Employees working in the frontline service for the restaurants must maintain an appropriate ratio of part-time and full-time. It is believed that overstaffing could deliver service error and thus lost of business. In order to deliver a good service to the customers, anyone at the frontline would have to fake a smile no matter what to the customers and always present the best out of them even if they are not in their best forms. For example, Lotte department store has the conviction of “customer always comes first”.

No comments:

Post a Comment