Global market trends move toward increasing global cultural convergence and, at the same time, a need for local cultural differentiation. To address these contradictory forces, the research investigates processes and practices of marketers and consumers in three related cases: Jay Chou (a...

In this paper we argue that the connectivity of the networked market permits market participants to perceive causal relationships between consumer behaviour and its effects on others. We theorize that the globally networked markets of the information age give birth to new cognitive structures...

This research represents an effort to fill the gap between brand development studies focusing expressly on Western brands and their markets and culture-specific global brand development in emerging markets, such as China. Case studies are presented of two Chinese brands, Shanghai Tang and Shang...

This study reveals Chinese consumers' desire to express deep resonance between Chinese values and aesthetics, and favored indigenous brands, such as Shang Xia, a high-end luxury brand. Findings demonstrate how brand literacy works in an emerging market, as an initial step toward a more developed...

Visual images constitute much corporate communication about products, economic performance, and social responsibility, and also inform governmental efforts to create positive attitudes for citizens, consumers, and organizations. Brand image, corporate image, advertising images, and images of...

This chapter presents qualitative methods for researching images, including advertising images, websites, film, and photographs. I draw on a theory of visual consumption to show how cultural codes and representational conventions inform contemporary marketing images, infusing them with visual,...

This paper investigates consumer responses to gay families portrayed in advertising, drawing on critical visual analysis, reader response analysis and queer theory. The results from twenty-five interviews showed that the ability to discover a family theme in ads is related to how consumers...

This conceptual paper reviews a typology of branding that identifies four perspectives on branding: corporate perspectives, consumer perspectives, cultural perspectives and critical perspectives. This typology helps organise and synthesise the growing interdisciplinary literature on brands and...

Cultural codes, ideological discourse, and rhetorical processes have been acknowledged as influences on consumer's relationships with advertising, brands and mass media. If brands exist as cultural, ideological, and rhetorical objects, then researchers require tools developed to understand...

To help shape a more cohesive research program in marketing and consumer research, this paper presents a systematic effort to integrate current research on consumer empowerment with highly influential theories of power. We develop a conceptual overview of power consisting of three dominant...