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This article is a preliminary research on manga content development of Urasawa Naoki, one of the most influential manga authors in Japan. After briefly describing Urasawa’s profile, characteristics of his manga creation and co-production with Nagasaki Takashi, an independent manga editor are discussed.

The purpose of this article is to briefly review the current status of the Japanese content industries: music, games, movies, animation and comics. The market size of the content industry is amount to approximately 14 trillion yen in 2006. It has been on the gradual increase for the past few years. Yet, some too optimistic views about the future of the industry have been withdrawn because it is said that the competitive advantages of the Japanese content industries have been losing recently. The digitalization of the content causes many changes in the content business: emerging global markets, business model, expression of content itself, and consumer behavior. The Japanese content industries face these fundamental changes and they need to rise to the challenge.

The purpose of this article is to further understand the creators’ cognitive processes in content (manga) development. This article focuses particularly on the initial stage of the manga creation process: from ideation to storyboard. In the field of product development, it is said that the decisions made during the early stages lock in 75% to 85% of the subsequent costs for manufacturing and marketing. Although these decisions are regarded as very important, thus far, not much has been done towards further examining them. In the following sections, the analytical framework adopted in this article, the ‘Geneplore model’ of creative cognition, is introduced after a brief review of the current situation of Japanese manga. A case of well-known female author of Japanese shôjo manga (girls’ comics) is analysed using the model.Findings suggest that, she develops her story as suggested by the Geneplore model of creative cognition. Full paper here. (Proceedings for AIMAC 2007)

Mental processes are the essence and the engine of creative endeavors.  The cognitive cognition approach focuses on the cognitive processes and structures that underlie creative thinking.  The purpose of this article is to improve understanding of the cognitive process of creators in the new product development.  After briefly reviewing the previous works on cognitive strategy of creators in marketing literatures, the “Geneplore model” of creative cognition is introduced for discussion.  The case of a well-known author of Japanese Girls’ comics (shojo manga), Miuchi Suzue was analyzed by using the model.

The Japanese content industry has been drawing much attention for the past few years as the next leading industry.  Despite the popularity of products, sales of most segments in the industry have been on the downtrend since around 1998.  Declining youth population and increasing mobile phone call charges have been often pointed out as reasons for this trend on the consumer’s side.  However, not many researches have been done on the supplier’s side.  The Japanese content industry is said a world of craftsmen and considered vulnerable as industry.  In order to take off and achieve sustainable growth, it is necessary to have a good system to support content production.  The purpose of this article is to improve understanding of the cognitive process of creators in the new product development.  Mental processes are the essence and the engine of creative endeavors.  The cognitive cognition approach focuses on the cognitive processes and structures that underlie creative thinking.  After briefly reviewing the previous works on cognitive strategy of creators in marketing literatures, the “Geneplore model” of creative cognition is introduced for discussion.  The case of a well-known author of Japanese Girl’s comics (shojo manga), Miuchi Suzue was analyzed by using the model.

Pirjo Laaksonen (1994) Consumer Involvement. In charge of chapter 2: Analysing the conceptual approaches to involvement

“Marketing communications strategy to restore customer’s trust," in Kanto Regional Conference of Japan Association for Advertising, Yokohama (10/15/2005)