This article reports the results of a study meant to portray a detailed picture of self-gift experiences in four contexts, focusing notably on reward and therapeutic self-gifts. Extending prior conceptual discussions, the findings suggest that self-gifts are a form of personally symbolic...

Print ads exhibit resonance when they combine wordplay with a relevant picture to create ambiguity and incongruity. This article uses multiple perspectives and methods within a framework of critical pluralism to investigate advertising resonance. Semiotic text analyses, a content analysis of...

Two fundamental orientations toward message comprehension have appeared in advertising research: the traditional objective view, which applies an accuracy criterion to conceptualize and evaluate comprehension, and the subjective view, which applies other criteria related to the individual...

Text interpretations, two experiments, and a set of reader-response interviews examine the impact of stylistic elements in advertising that form visual rhetorical figures parallel to those found in language. The visual figures examined here--rhyme, antithesis, metaphor, and pun--produced more...

This article critically examines the rise and fall of the Martha Stewart brand, and offers lessons to consumer businesses who seek to fortify their master brands through associations with others' brands - be they celebrities or otherwise.