A Relevant Study on Emotional Healing Marketing for Female

Consumers in Otome Games: Taking Love and Deep Space as an

Example

Xuanjun Lin

School of Film, Television and Media, Guangxi Arts Institute, 530022, Nanning, Guangxi, China

Keywords: Marketing, Otome Games, Female Consumption.

Abstract: With the improvement of the national economic and the awakening of women's self-awareness, women's

demand for quality of life is also gradually steadily increased, and women have become the main consumer

of more brands. The rapid development of the “she economy” has increased the influence of women's

consumption in various fields, and female-oriented games have become the mainstream market. Female

consumers can bring business opportunities to many industries. In the field of female-oriented handheld

games, female consumers not only spend time and money on the games, but also buy related peripheral

products, as well as participate in related activities offline, including the purchase of co-branded products,

and participate in parties and reunions. The study of women's motivation to buy related products can provide

reference value for brand marketing. Through social media research and analysis, it is concluded that

purchasing peripherals can bring emotional value to consumers, and in the development of “her economy”,

women pay more attention to internal needs and emotional dependence. Related industries must understand

and leverage women's psychology and flexibly utilize women's psychology to give the right emotional

feedback in order to become the long-term choice of users.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the recent rise of “her economy” and the

continuous growth of women's consumption power,

women are more willing to pay for their emotional

value, which has become the mainstream demand.

Most female consumers will buy related peripherals

to get a sense of companionship while they are

spending money on games. This study is very relevant

to the marketing strategies of related industries that

cater to female users. This study focuses on two

specific aspects of peripheral purchase motivation

and the difference between love and deep space and

other games of the same type, using the literature

analysis method to find and read relevant information

and literature, the advantage of this method is that it

can be a good reference to past research results,

understanding of peripheral, the definition of the

game of the Otome, audience analysis, insights into

the user's demands, which is conducive to the study.

The ultimate research objective of this study is to

emphasize the importance of marketing for women's

emotional healing and to provide reference and

assistance to the same type of industries to help them

grow in the long run, stabilize the market

environment, provide more satisfactory services to

consumers, and contribute to economic development.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The term “Otome” originates from Japan, which

originally means “young girl, unmarried young girl”.

Otome games originated in Japan and are a kind of

relationship simulation games designed for women,

in which the player usually plays the female

protagonist and interacts with a number of male

characters in a love story. With the development of

time, Otome games have also developed into a

popular game genre in China. With the rapid

development of China's economy, the basic needs of

young people have been satisfied and they have

begun to pursue a richer spiritual life. The rise of

emerging media has transformed the way young

people communicate and interact, and emotional

communication in the virtual world of the Internet

seems to be more secure than in real life. In this fast-

paced state of life, people's desire for emotional needs

720

Lin, X.

A Relevant Study on Emotional Healing Marketing for Female Consumers in Otome Games: Taking Love and Deep Space as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0014279400004942

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Psychology and Marketing Management (APMM 2025), pages 720-724

ISBN: 978-989-758-791-7

has become a new trend in the market, with young

people enriching their life experience and enhancing

their sense of well-being through active consumption.

In addition to in-game consumption, romance games

dominated by female players have also begun to

explore the offline commoditization of emotions.

Emotional consumption relies on the effective

construction of emotions, which is reflected in the

game design and peripheral design of ethereal games

(Su, 2024). In the beginning, the female characters of

Otome games were set as weak and passive women,

but in the subsequent development, the female

characters have grown stronger and stronger, and the

game settings no longer treat the female image as a

companion to the male, but rather put the female in

the same central position as the male, emphasize the

social image and value of women, and show the

charm and power beyond gender, and the female

characters have become more powerful (Hao, 2024;

Bao, 2023). In the game of love and deep space, the

main control role is the hunter character with

overwhelming force value, in the game, the main

male character is our “auxiliary”, and contemporary

women desire gender equality, mutual respect for the

relationship needs to resonate with each other, and fit

each other. Peripheral products should bring positive

energy to people and satisfy their spiritual needs. The

American industrial designer, GLP, said that people

always think that design has three dimensions:

aesthetics, technology, and economy, but in fact, the

fourth dimension, “human nature”, is more important.

In the design of anime peripheral products consumer

“human nature” is the focus, that is, to meet the

spiritual needs (Zhang, 2024). The core viewpoints of

products to satisfy spiritual needs include: emotional

resonance, personalized experience, community

belonging, brand values, and pleasure of use. Among

them, emotional resonance is a very important part of

product design (Pingcode, 2024). The shift from

“shopping for a product to please yourself” to

“buying a product to please yourself”, in addition to

the pursuit of value for money, emotional release will

be an important factor influencing the decision-

making of the younger generation of consumers in

2024 (Zhang & Ning, 2024). Many young people are

more inclined to buy a piece of merchandise that can

perform psychological healing for them, which

reflects the lack of emotion of contemporary people,

and the ethereal girl game industry can precisely fill

the gap in people's hearts, so more people rely on

virtual emotions. In the current social environment

where women are still in a passive position in

relationships, virtual boyfriends reverse the

traditional subject-object position of both genders in

intimate relationships with the subject-object

relationship of consumer-worker in economic

relationships, and men are more likely to be treated as

“sex objects” than women when they act as a servant

in the simulated “emotional commodities” in intimate

relationships (Wu & Sun, 2023). Men are less likely

than women to be treated as “sex objects”, but rather

a more equal and pure romantic relationship (Wu &

Sun, 2023). Otome game to create, is a very rare in

real life, pure, sincere, desirable feelings, this

“utopia” is Otome game for players to create a higher

than life emotional space, and the designers of the

player's psychological needs for constant attention

and response (Yan et al., 2024). Game as a

commercial product, its production and marketing

will be affected by the market, resulting in the game

content will inevitably be associated with

consumption, Otome game players invested time and

money in exchange for the opportunity to interact

with the game characters, this model is actually to

turn the player's emotional investment into the actual

expenditure of time and money, and to transform the

emotional experience into a purchasable commodity,

which highlights the trend of consumerization of the

emotional experience (Chen & Zhang, 2024). In

addition to serving the game industry, this emotional

experience can likewise drive the market economy of

related cultural industries. In the development of “her

economy, women's consumption behavior has the

characteristics of impulsive, personalized, social and

leisure, to establish the relationship between

consumers and brands, so that consumers have

emotional resonance, so as to establish the emotion of

the brand, it is easier to produce the purchase

behavior, and the simplest and most brutal means of

establishing brand feelings is to provide rich

emotional value that touches women's hearts (Xu,

2019). Most of the past researches focus on serving

the industry of Otome games and care about the

emotional social problems reflected, and fewer of

them summarize the successful marketing methods of

Otome games and explore the possibility of applying

them to other industries of the same track. This study

mainly focuses on the emotional healing marketing

methods of the Otome game, analyzing its behavior,

motivation and user feedback, and reflecting the

feasibility of the application of emotional healing

marketing in the cultural industry.

3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This study utilizes art world theory and field theory.

Art world theory was proposed by Arthur C. Danto,

A Relevant Study on Emotional Healing Marketing for Female Consumers in Otome Games: Taking Love and Deep Space as an Example

721

an American philosopher of art. The social

environment in which art is received is divided into

three components: subjects, institutions, rules and

systems. The production of a cultural and creative

industry cannot be an individual act; it requires

teamwork and division of labor. For example, in the

TV drama industry, the birth of a TV drama requires

the participation of directors, scriptwriters, film and

television companies, investors and actors, and it is

accomplished by this group of people working

together in unity. But they don't just work together,

they have to follow the rules and steps to work

together. The people who work in each step of the

process have certain rules of the road that dictate their

behavior, such as being mindful of copyrights, the

impact of what is aired, the choice of actors, etc., and

the end result is the formation of this cultural product.

And field theory is one of the main theories of

sociology, proposed by Kurt Kaufka. This theory

consists of three basic concepts-field, position, and

structure. The different types of producers included in

the production of a particular cultural product can

form a field. When producing a particular cultural

product, the various producers included in this world

of its production can be seen as a POSITION.

Multiple different positions will have different

relationships with each other, and they form a

STRUCTURE between them. When we look at retail

as a field, it can be divided into two positions, one

with physical stores and one with online shopping.

The physical store section can be categorized into

national stores and regional stores, regional stores,

and regional stores can be categorized into stores for

the rich and stores for normal people. They then form

a structure with power relations and differential

relations between them.

4 CASE STUDY

Regarding people's behavior of buying peripherals of

Otome games,the peripheral industry can be divided

It mainly consists of paper folding companies,

peripheral production manufacturers and consumers.

In addition to the default rules of production material,

product form, and finished product effect, there is one

more rule that has been agreed upon by the industry,

whose primary audience is women - the transmission

of Emotional value. According to social media

analysis, most consumers say they buy peripherals

because they can feel “you” in my neighborhood.

Seeing your favorite characters in your daily life is a

psychological comfort. More some consumers said,

not only put on display to ornamental, they will also

take the periphery out of the house, dinner, travel will

also give the periphery photos, just like their favorite

hero walked into their lives, feel the real company,

and can make their lives become more hopeful and

visionary. Some people are encouraged by feeling

their presence, while others are reminded of

something they said when they see their periphery

and their anxiety is reduced. For example, when you

feel anxious about your appearance, the hero will say

“there is no ugliness”; when you feel lonely, the hero

will say “two stars accompany each other in the

universe, it should not be lonely”; there are also

people who will worry that they are not good enough

for such a wonderful “him” in reality. “He will go on

a diet for the hero, and even more so.

Others will worry that they are not good enough

for him, so they will go on a diet for the main

character, study and work harder, improve

themselves and adjust their mindset, thus changing

themselves and the status quo. These feedbacks can

reflect the role of the emotional value of the periphery

for consumers, and can also be interpreted as their

motivation to buy the periphery, and these emotional

resonance rides on the wind and waves, and strongly

promotes its market spread. Data show that the water

flow of the periphery related to love and deep space

has exceeded 100 million plus. The success of Love

and Deep Space shows that related industries need to

focus on carrying and presenting emotional value

when producing products. Love and Deep Space is

more immersive than other Otome games (Light and

Night Love, Beyond the World, Love and Maker,

etc.), and is more able to pinpoint people's needs and

amplify emotional value.

Better meets players' needs while amplifying

emotional value. Specifically embodied in the next

three aspects: first of all,more realistic 3D experience:

love and deep space is the first 3D stereo modeling

ethereal girl game, through the first perspective of the

3D plot and 3D interaction, to produce a high-quality

emotional experience. Second is personalized

character customization: personalized character

customization is more immersive, allowing players to

freely adjust their character image according to their

own preferences and aesthetics, including appearance

characteristics, voice characteristics, clothing and

makeup, etc., and can also have nicknames. The last

is the innovative interactive mode: in the game you

can take photos, catch dolls, play games with the male

lead, and you can also interact with the male lead on

a daily basis, ask the male lead what to eat today as

well as let the male lead accompany the user to

exercise and study, etc. These modes create a sense of

immersive experience, immersion, and realism for the

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user, which makes it stand out from the rest of the

many Otome games.

According to market research, the game not only

has a huge popularity, a wide customer base and a

broad market in China, but also tops the free list in

many countries around the world (especially in Japan)

and has made its way into the top 10 of many best-

seller lists. Within 2024, the global domestic and

overseas revenue exceeds RMB 1.6 billion, a figure

that sets a new record for female-oriented handheld

games and brings great possibilities for the future of

the game. This case shows that not only Chinese

consumers, but also female consumers around the

world have a huge demand for emotional value,

emotional resonance and emotional dependence, and

the marketing tool of emotional healing marketing is

applicable to female consumers around the world.

5 DISCUSSION

The sense of companionship in the periphery comes

not only from the picture of one's favorite hero above

and its own significance, but also from the form of the

artifact.From badges and acrylic products to the

development of male attributes in cotton dolls,

holding a cotton doll is more comforting and fulfilling

than simply having a badge. This can lead to other

related industries, such as the industry of designing

clothes for cotton dolls, the industry of making

peripheral decorative display props, and the industry

of producing pain bags filled with badges and dolls of

secondary characters. In addition to this, there would

be other artistic secondary creations, such as writing

little daily essays about the heroes and themselves,

drawing for the heroes, etc. People would pay

someone else to draw or write for them, to make their

imaginations tangible, and these transactions

gradually developed into a market model. And all of

these industries emerged and grew based on

providing emotional value.

Not only has the peripheral industry, but also

Love and Deep Space recently launched co-branding

campaigns that capitalize on women’s desire to lose

weigh, the use of innovative ways to accompany, not

only can let their favorite characters to accompany

their own running, but also to get the medal reward,

break through the secondary circle, expand the

existing existing users and the game interaction

scene, extend the game of the immersive experience.

There are also several offline activities, which also

enable users to still feel the warmth from the game in

their lives even outside of the game. For example, on

the first day of the public test in Changsha, Tokyo,

New York, Deji Plaza to put naked eye 3D big screen,

to increase the exposure of the game and user

participation; Invite the famous singer Sarah

Brightman to sing the theme song of deep space,

sufficient warm-up for the game promotion; Cross-

border linkage with Changguang Satellite, through

which the satellite carries game data and transmits the

ID information of hunters to the universe, similar to a

starry message to the male protagonists; and overseas

co-branded cultural tourism activities, from China's

Mt. Everest to the British valleys, and from the

Finnish ice fields to the French coast, you can find the

corresponding elements corresponding to the male

protagonists in each location. These tactics not only

plug new users while attracting existing users to go

offline and increase local tourism revenues, but also

increase the presence of the male lead in real life and

create a connection. There are also some special co-

branding, such as kfc, Rosen convenience store, Gu

Ming milk tea store, etc. During the co-branding

period, the training of staff address and the layout of

the theme store, to enhance the brand attraction and

influence, to attract potential customers, to drive the

sales of the food and beverage industry, and to

enhance the user's immersive experience. Not only do

these co-brandings drive increased exposure and

subscribers to the game, but they also give players a

sense of romance and more possibilities, but the

ultimate reason for these behaviors of purchasing co-

branded products and taking part in punching bags of

offline activities is still the emotional value provided.

6 CONCLUSION

The result of this study is that the important success

of the marketing strategy of Love and Deep Space is

because it focuses on the users, follows the market

trend, innovates the inherent mode, and provides

sufficient emotional value, which further leads to the

conclusion that in the modern era of rapid

development of “her economy”, Otome games should

accurately locate the needs of women, form a strong

emotional resonance, and seize the emotional value of

this marketing focus in order to become the users'

long-term choice. The study further concludes that

Otome games should accurately position themselves

in the modern era of “her economy”, form strong

emotional resonance, and seize the emotional value as

the key marketing point in order to become the long-

term choice of users. This study provides many

valuable references for future research in this

direction, which mainly affects many industries

whose main users are women, such as the cosmetics

A Relevant Study on Emotional Healing Marketing for Female Consumers in Otome Games: Taking Love and Deep Space as an Example

723

industry, the clothing industry, and the luxury goods

industry. Future research should focus more on more

innovative means of emotional healing marketing,

why women pay so much attention to the value of

emotions, how to measure the value of emotions, the

game design of female-oriented handheld games, why

women rely more on avatars and virtual life than in

real life, and why the male protagonists of Otome

games can get the “love” of users. These directions

will be studied in depth.

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