Brand VS Band: Global Marketing Analysis on two of K-pop groups, NCT and BTS

K-pop as a music industry has gained a lot of attention in 2019 in the U.S. and globally. K-pop has experienced two decades of expansion from South-Korea to global markets, becoming one of the leading music industries in the world. The purpose of this thesis was to study the marketing activities of two case companies, SM Entertainment and BigHit Entertainment, and two of their boy music groups, NCT and BTS respectively. The focus of this thesis was to showcase the groups’ promotional activities in the U.S. and to study the usage of marketing mix. The thesis is compiled of an empirical study of the K-pop industry and its international activities in the U.S., organized into 3 sections explaining different time periods and the market changes internationally. The marketing strategies of the case companies were explained to describe the key concepts the businesses focus on, and the 4Ps of the marketing mix were analyzed in the two groups of BTS and NCT. The research question was to study how the two companies use marketing to their advantage in the U.S. region; the research was made with the help of secondary data. The results indicate that both companies engage in marketing mix activities, which appeal to their young target market and utilize social media as a strong marketing tool. The products are made to appeal to consumers in various ways in a large scale varying from brand expansion to meeting localized needs. The results also show that the localization strategy created for the group NCT has not worked as initially planned during 2016-2019. As the two groups have difference in fanbase size, the numbers in social media followers and album sales were not comparable but helped to gain an understanding of the groups’ social media tactics. An important discovery that was revealed during the thesis process was the scale of the social media usage, glocalization of production and localization to local needs