Merchandising Snoopy: The case of licensing Peanuts in Japan

The Peanuts brand has commanded multimillion-dollar success in the challenging Japanese marketplace. The strength of the intellectual property developed by comic artist Charles M. Schulz and its resonance with fundamental Japanese tastes account for only part of the brand’s success. This study uses a historiographic methodology of ethnographic, interview, and archival research to examine the case of the Peanuts brand’s strategic approach to expansion in the Japanese market. The research findings indicate that (a) licensing is a strategically profitable model for adapting and logistically distributing a product to a new market, (b) active oversight structured into the licensing scheme is critical for maintaining brand integrity, and (c) division of authority that relies on localized partnerships within that structure of oversight is necessary to allow for the desired adaptation key to success