Mascot and Brand Sustainability in Pandemic Era: Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, Mascot is widely used for various purposes, such as brand identity and promotion. Japan can be considered the most prosperous country in creating many iconic mascots that have proven to be popular and influential in place branding. The utilization of mascots for place branding is regarded as a common practice in Japan, to the point that its prefectures and provincial policies have their own mascots. Furthermore, several cities in Indonesia, such as Surabaya, Balikpapan, and Malang, have also created city mascots that act as city icons and representatives. In addition to place branding, mascots can be used for communication or events such as the Asian Games 2018, in which the mascot acts as its event branding and represents the eastern, central, and western regions of Indonesia. Are mascots still relevant in this pandemic era? The significance of the mascot’s impact on brand sustainability in this pandemic era deserves to be questioned due to the drastic changes that the pandemic has brought to all aspects of life. With the “new normal,” most things have shifted online instead of offline to avoid any physical interaction that can trigger the spread of the virus. Moreover, user-friendly websites and applications are now more in demand than ever, and some are using mascots as intermediaries between the website and the user. Therefore, up-to-date research is needed to identify the connection between mascots and brand sustainability. The proposed study aims to summarize the literature on the development of the use of mascots for the past three years during the covid-19 pandemic era from 2020 to 2022. This research utilized the Systematic Literature Review method by assembling two research questions (RQ), (1) Are there any shift in the use and benefits of mascots to brand sustainability during the pandemic era? (2) How has mascot research developed to date? Journals were collected based on journals indexed by Google Scholar, and the keywords used were mascot, brand, and pandemic. The final result of the study answered the two RQs.