Pokédex:
A Study of Pokémon Popularity
Project Proposal:
In recent years, the gaming giant Nintendo has had some tough competition from rival companies like Sega
and Sony. With the launch of the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation in 1995, Nintendo console sales have
pummelled drastically due to intense competition. However, in 1998, sales for both the Game Boy and the
Nintendo 64 consoles have picked up. The popularity of Pokémon has caused these sales increases.
Therefore, Nintendo has been focusing a lot of its resources towards Pokémon itself.
We can identify this from the fact that there are a
growing number of Pokémon products. In our project, we plan to:
1) Analyse the marketing strategies used by Nintendo, in the process of marketing
Pokémon that helped boost Pokémon's popularity.
To trace Pokémon's popularity throughout the world, we have to look at the company that marketed it.
Nintendo, the company that marketed Pokémon, has to be of vast resources to market Pokémon throughout
the world. The company would employ good marketing strategies, and our group wants to analyse these
strategies.
2) Include a brief summary of the basics and fundamentals of Economics.
As the main part of our project consists of many marketing and economic jargons and important terms, we
will include a brief summary of the basics and fundamentals of Economics to let viewers without any
knowledge of Economics have a chance of understanding what the project is about.
3) Convince Pokémon critics or any other person who are ant-Pokémon to have a
different perspective of Pokémon.
Our group believes that Pokémon is beneficial and that its benefits overwhelm its problems. However there
are critics who object to that and our group wants to prove to them that Pokémon is beneficial by means
of counter-criticisms or commenting.
4) Show people how we view Pokémon, and how Pokémon will affect the global economic
market.
The appearance of Pokémon has certainly shaped the world economic market in some ways and our group wants
to find out how exactly Pokémon has done it and in what ways. We will also provide our own views on
Pokémon.
5) Show how Human Psychology plays an important role in the marketing strategies
employed by Nintendo in the marketing of Pokémon.
Often many companies use their knowledge of Human Psychology to enhance their products to suit customers.
Our group wants to find out if Nintendo has employed such tactics and if it does, our group wants to know
how Nintendo does it and how important Human Psychology is.
We plan to achieve these by:
1) Studying marketing strategies and techniques, then analyse Nintendo's way of
marketing Pokémon.
Marketing is the process of creating a product, planning the pricing, promotions and placing of the
product by buying and selling in which both the buyer and the seller profit. Our group will read up on
and learn marketing skills and techniques. We will also research on economics. Compiling the information
we gather, we will then analyse Nintendo's way of marketing Pokémon.
2) Conduct a survey to find out what people think of Pokemon and what comments they
have for Pokémon.
Through conducting a survey, we can find out what the general public thinks of Pokémon. Then using the
information gathered, we will explain what the good points of Pokémon are. We will also show how these
good points overwhelm the bad points of Pokémon.
Researchers have pointed out that playing games can help develop the mind. Therefore, we will show how a
person can build his character through interaction with the Pokémon games and how the Pokémon games are
more beneficial than other games.
If the general public has any comments for Pokémon, we will analyse them and find out why the comments
are given.
3) Reading up and researching on Human Psychology.
All human beings behave in certain manners and ways and Human Psychology is the study of why they behave
in that manner. Our group will try to identify how children react when there is a sudden trend in the
market and how Nintendo has responded to this reaction.
Finally, statistical results as well as the survey results will be included in our final product. We
plan to do case studies of the survey results to establish what makes people like or dislike Pokémon,
in other words, we want to find out the reasons that compel people to interact or run away from Pokémon.
Our group will include an interactive website with our project. As many people have different preferences,
our group will create two websites. One would be in text-only format, and another in HTML format.
These websites will be subdivided into five subsections containing the main contents of our project, and
they are:
1) The introduction, and the introduction is again subdivided into three topics:
(a) We will introduce the viewer to Pokémon itself, letting the viewer have a deeper understanding of
Pokémon before he proceeds to explore our website.
(b) We will show the viewer the purpose of our project, which is mainly to analyse the marketing strategies
used by Nintendo in the marketing of the Pokémon products. We will also show the other objectives of our
project such as proving that Pokémon is beneficial.
(c) Finally, in this subsection, we will show the usefulness of our project.
2) Identifying and analysing the marketing strategies used by Nintendo to market
Pokémon. This subsection is divided into four topics:
(a) We will provide a summary of the basics and fundamentals of economics so that any visitor to out
website can understand the many jargons related to economics or marketing.
(b) We will find out what business cycles are and how they affect the economics market on the whole.
(c) Nearly every marketing textbook will contain the 4Ps. Our group will find out what the 4Ps are,
how they inter-relate and how they affect marketing strategies.
(d) Finally, our group will present our research on the marketing strategies used by Nintendo.
3) Statistics will be presented at this subsection. It is divided into two topics:
(a) The survey results will be presented.
(b) The sales statistics of Pokémon merchandise will be presented.
4) In this subsection, case studies will be presented. It is divided into two topics:
(a) A case study of the survey results will be presented.
(b) We will do a case study of how human psychology is influencing the marketing strategies used by
Nintendo.
5) We will provide counter-criticisms and comments in this subsection. Each member
of the group will present his views of Pokémon, Nintendo and the project itself.
Besides all the research, the website will include interactive elements. They are:
1) A forum for anyone who wants to discuss Pokémon.
2) Asking visitors to the website to give comments on Pokémon, the website or the project
3) Providing JavaScript games like business quizzes and crossword puzzles
4) A competition for writers to write stories concerning Pokémon.
5) A search engine
Each member shall be responsible for all the jobs he is assigned for the project.
1) Yihui Li
Roles: Team Leader, Researcher, and Analysis
Jobs: He is the main researcher on marketing strategies and techniques. He shall also analyse the tactics
used by Nintendo to market Pokémon.
2) Yunfei Sng
Roles: Assistant Team Leader, Researcher, Graphics Designer and Web Designer
Jobs: He shall design the graphics for the websites, read up on Economics, analyse the education aspect
of our project, compile the sales statistics, and read up on human psychology. He will do a part
of the survey as well as compile the survey statistics.
3) Yuwei Lee
Roles: Secretary and Researcher
Jobs: He shall create the time schedule for our project, read up on Economics, identify the moral values
that Pokémon teaches or encourages, help with the surveying of the general public, do the introduction
of the project, compile survey statistics, do a case study on the survey result, and read up on human
psychology.
The group members are:
1) Yihui, Li (Student, The Chinese High School, Singapore)
2) Yunfei, Sng (Student, The Chinese High School, Singapore)
3) Yuwei, Lee (Student, The Chinese High School, Singapore)
The coach is:
1) Ms. Gwee Hana (Senior Subject Teacher, The Chinese High School, Singapore)
Our time schedule is as follow:
Early March:
Formation of the team
March:
Discussion of the objectives of the project
Late March:
Summary of Marketing/Economics and Introduction of project
Early April:
Requesting of coach
April:
Creation of suitable website designs
Early May:
Submission of project proposal, compiling of sales statistics
June:
Reading up of Economics/Marketing and Human Psychology, Survey to be done, Creation of Interactive games
on websites
Late June:
Compiling of the survey statistics, case study of survey results to be done
Early July:
Moral values of Pokémon to be identified, website to be confirmed and done, all graphics needed to be
designed
July:
Analysing of marketing strategies, techniques and Human Psychology
15th August:
Submission of the project