As we know, the branding business models developed by Bikram Choudhury, and Tara Stiles are both successful. All of them have big group of follower. However, I think the “Hot Yoga”, which Bikram developed, is more sustainable and will be more popular than the Tara’s “free style” Yoga because of several reasons. Yoga is a religious exercise. It started to enter American in the mid-19th century. But, America is a predominantly Christian country. How can an activity with different religion be successful? For example, the Yoga style developed by Bikram has been widely accepted by Americans and the people all over the world now. As far as I am concerned, the reason why his Yoga style is successful is not because of the religion, but for its health properties, and its special exercise mode.
People pay a lot more attention to the health recently. People try to find ways to keep their body healthy and strong to live in this competitive and stressful society. A lot of people hope to control their weigh especially women. Bikram’sYoga is precisely what they are looking for. Bikram stated that people can stretch their body easier and deeper in a hot circumstance. Also, in the temperature between 100 and 105 people can sweat more, which is a good way to consume more fat and cholesterol. While, Tara’s yoga style could not provide people such an efficient way to lose weight. This is the reason why Bikram’s branding strategy is more successful and can get more customers.
Even though the price for the hot Yoga studio is pretty high, but the professional and efficient yoga exercise can still let the Bikram’s Yoga get more market share. As I said, female is the main target market, and women is playing an important role in the society now. There are19,015,900 people in New York City, and almost half of them are women. Besides, the percent of women in the Labor Force is 58.9% in the United States, and the percent of employed women who work in Managerial or Professional Occupations are 39.5%. Also, the percentage is increasing. These conditions imply that women are more likely to choose the “Hot Yoga” which better meet the customer’s demand, even though the price is much higher than Tara’s Yoga style. In addition, Bikram set a high price for his Yoga class is because the class needs to keep the temperature between 100 and 105, so the temperature control device is necessary. Therefore, the high price becomes more reasonable.
Bikram also did a good job in product promotion. First, he is a extravert person. He often involves entertainment and fashion. His celebrity helps him to promote his Yoga style. What’s more, Bikram alleged that doing “Hot Yoga” has many good effects, such as treating diabetes, and the recovery of his injured knee. Some good results like these give people confidents to follow him. The sagacious decision of patenting the Bikram style provides him a good way to earn money because anyone who wants to open a Yoga studio has to pay him a fee. In addition, this behavior makes his Yoga style distinguishes from others, so that improves the competitiveness of his Yoga.

Bikram Choudhury developed hot Yoga exercises. He created different style of Yoga under very hot temperatures. His classroom temperature ranged between 100 and 105 degrees. Bikram created Hot Yoga for stretching because he noticed that under that when it is hotter then he can sweat more and stretch more. It hurts less when the room is hot and you never get injury and you can get deeper and deeper under very hot conditions. Bikram was able to create mane Yoga poses and patent his poses and exercise. He opened 5,000 studios in 220 countries and his revenue was 5 million a year. He was fighting for his patents and to make sure not would copy his asanas and poses. Bikram taught instructors and issued certificates to teachers in India. He charged 7,000 dollars for tuition and several thousand more for room and board. Bikram issued cease-and-desist letters and hunted down perceived copycats to protect his business revenue. His practice is competitively proofed and became more sustainable than other Yoga practices because he created patented Yoga poses and exercises that belong to him only.
Tara Styles created very successful practice as well but her Yoga teaching were created not using Indians words but rather for people who would make Yoga cool. She was basically breaking Yoga rules. She created controversy and added music to Yoga practice. Tara Styles connected younger generations to Yoga. She said that practicing Yoga would make better sex, better relationship and centers and grounds you. Both Bikram and Tara wrote books but Tara Styles practice was under cool conditions than hot. She connected “Nissan Masters” and automakers to show her Yoga potential and she conducted online teaching sessions on Facebook to launch her business. She launched her new workout videos with Jane Fonda and group of fitness instructors. Tara patented her patga classes like Bikram did. Tara Styles book was called Slim Calm Sexy Yoga and was the number one yoga book on Amazon.com for several months in 2010. Tara did not connect Yoga to Hinduism because she noticed that the was lots of tension with calling it Hindu but she was accepting that it was rooted in ancient India. Both Bikram and Tara were very successful in Yoga business. They practiced different styles of Yoga. Bikram style of Yoga became more successful and his model and branding business became more sustainable and competitive because he was able to create very good revenue from his business model.

Institute For Women’s Policy Research, The Status of Women and Girls, State-by-State Rankings and Data on Indicators of Social and Economic Status, 2011, Web. http://iwpr.org/initiatives/the-status-of-women-and-girls Demographics of the United States,Wikipedia, October 1, 2013, Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States Riechesbaird Branding Business, Brand Strategy & Architecture, riechesbaird.com, Web. http://riechesbaird.com/services/brand-strategy_cp.aspx?gclid=CI2yjsGE9rkCFYWd4Aod4g4Acw How To B2B Effectively by Latitude Solutions, 10 ways to improve your brand , imagewww.b2bmarketingblog.co.uk, Sep, 29th, Web. http://www.b2bmarketingblog.co.uk/strategies/10-ways-to-improve-your-brand-image/ Jordan Susman, Your Karma Ran Over My Dogma: Bikram Yoga and the (Im)Possibilities of Copyrighting Yoga, 25 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 245 (2004)
Rebecca Moss (July 19, 2012), Bikram Choudhury Battles for Control of the Hot Yoga Tradition he Invented, LA Weekly. Thursday, Jul 19 2012, Web. http://www.laweekly.com/2012-07-19/news/Bikram-yoga-greg-gumucio-bikram-choudhury/ Bikram Choudhury teaches Hot Yoga in Phuket, Youtube, Web. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQSrKEJMzho Bikram Yoga: 90 minutes of your life, a video about Bikram Yoga on Youtube, Web. January 2nd, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL41dKNaD-I About Tara Stiles, tarastiles.com, October 1, 2013, Web. http://tarastiles.com/about/ Stiles, Tara (February 15, 2009), Help! I'm Addicted to Facebook, The Huffington Post. Retrieved January 24, 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-stiles/help-im-addicted-to-faceb_b_166726.html 1) What value has the branding of yoga created?
We can analyze the value that created by branding yoga from the following points of view: marketing, human resource, firm infrastructure, service fee, taxation
Marketing: To attract guests, yoga studios need to advertise themselves on Internet, magazines, news papers, etc. which allowed advertisement companies to get revenues. When yoga becomes a kind of fashion, the accessories market, such as yoga pad, clothes, and music, could develop better. What’s more, the special columns of yoga tend to be made on the Internet after yoga gets popular. The information industry can benefit from yoga industry also.
Human resource: branding yoga can offer a lot of working opportunity. Yoga teachers, law advisers, managers, service staffs, and so on.
Firm infrastructure: every yoga studio needs to rent, or build a room for active. So, branding yoga can create values for real estate companies and fitment companies.
Service fee & taxation: According to the case, Bikram’s business earned about $5 million a year; most of this revenue comes from training fee. For taxation part, including land tax, receipts tax, consumption tax, individual income tax, etc.
2) How was value been created? By whom? For whom?
As I mentioned above, during the marketing process, yoga studios create value for websites, magazines, and newspaper publishers. Yoga also creates value for sports gear shops, and music shops.
For human resource part, yoga studios create value for staffs, who also help yoga studios to create value.
When yoga studios rent rooms, value created by studios for fitness companies
Yoga also creates value for countries income by paying tax.
3) What is your evaluation of the branding business models developed by Bikram Choudhury? Tara Stiles?
Bikram Choudhury: BC style yoga tends to treat yoga in academic way. He separates his point of view of yoga by building yoga studios, training yoga trainers, and protects yoga from being influenced by modern culture. In this traditional way to marketing yoga could attract those people who truly love, and present with all respect to this old sport. This group of people will continuously create value for BC style yoga, at the same time, introduce BC yoga to a larger group of people. However, from business angle, the main disadvantage of BC yoga is that it is not a popular market style. The ignorance of the power of internet may lose some potential market, the insistence of “bring to light yoga’s Hindu roots” (which may cause some misunderstanding that practicing yoga would change guests’ religion belief) will cause some people conflict BC yoga subconsciously, the lawsuit would leave people an impression that BC is a little mean and serious.
Tara Stiles: As Tara said, “If felt right and natural, not rigid with a certain style…” she grabs the market requirement of modern society, offer gusts a free style yoga. Tara markets her yoga courses in a free and fashion way. She uses YouTube as a media, which is accepted by most people, especially teenagers and some middle age people. The younger her supporters are, the longer time period they would be her guests. After having this foundation, she started to write, open studio, attend some organizations, and so on. I would argue that she is marketing herself rather than marketing her yoga. She uses her popular yoga style and her good looking as tools to set herself as an image representative of yoga and healthy, then sell some yoga accessories.
4) What model is more sustainable? Competitively proofed?
I think BC model is more sustainable, but now, TS model is more competitive. Now, there are a huge amount of Hindu American in the U.S, a lot of them practice yoga. BC model can gain the support from most of Hindu American yoga amateur. As a historical sport, yoga will not extinct, so does yoga culture and Hindu American. BC model creates a whole value chain for those people who really love yoga. After BC pass away, this value chain will still exist.
Compare with BC model, TS model focus on women who want to have healthy life style and become pretty. This is a larger group than those who want to set yoga as their long term interest. But TS model is hard to last long, because if there appears a more fashion concept of yoga, some of her supporters could join her competitor’s side. On the other hand, as I mentioned, TS is marketing herself rather than yoga, as the growing of her age, the main “product” will disappear gradually. Even though TS model is more competitive now, it is not as sustainable as BC model.