"ひなたぼっこネコ"
This is a cat chopsticks stand. I bought it from a 10 dollars shop. We can see all the words there except "ネコ" is written in Hiragana. In Japanese, "CAT" does has its own Kanji,"猫" , but the producer did not use it.
The reason why the producer did not use Kanji to represent "CAT" maybe because of the emphasis function of Katakana. Since the selling point of this product is the shape of the chopsticks stand, which is a cat laying on the floor in order to enjoy sunshine, the producer had to emphasize this selling point. Thus, the word "ネコ" should be in Katakana form so as to show its importance and lure customers.
"リラックマの詳しい情報はコチラ"
"リラックマ" is the name of this cartoon character.
As the character is called "リラックマ". It is a very famous cartoon character in Japan and even in Hong Kong. It can always attract many customers to buy the products because of this bear. So, it is important to make its name appeal to customers.
Just like another well-known cartoon character, Hello Kitty, mostly you can see her name in English because it is already a representative of the character and easy to catch people's eyes . Imagine if the producer write the name in Hiragana form, the name of the character cannot be emphasize and customers may also feel confused if the name of the character is using the same form with other words.
For the word "コチラ", which means people can check the detail here in the website. It is usually written in Hiragana "こちら". The function of using Katakana here is to emphasize the website in order to let more people to get to know their official site.
