Paradisal discourse: A critical analysis of marketing and consuming Hawaii

The marketing of certain tourist destinations can be analyzed as discourse that conveys meaning to the consumer and to the consumed. This discourse, which I refer to hereafter as paradisal discourse, is a combination of Orientalism, travel writing, discourse of the Primitive, and diverse forms of Otherness. This paper begins with an exploration of discourse as a tool of knowledge and of power, illustrated through a detailed assessment of Said's Orientalism and other relevant works and concepts. The discourses of “Orientalism,” “primitivism” and travel writing are likened to the paradisal discourse found in the marketing of certain types of tourist destinations. The second section of the paper presents an historical and cultural analysis of the concept of paradise in Western society, summarizing the elements which, over time, have come to form this distinctive discourse. The third section of the paper assesses the way in which this discourse forms the framework by which a specific tropical paradise, Hawaii, is marketed and consumed today.     

What do we mean by sustainability marketing?

ABSTRACT

Sustainability in marketing has gained some traction over the years, yet we still remain uncertain about exactly what ‘sustainability marketing’ means. Utilising the Scopus database, a discourse analysis was conducted on nearly 200 published journal articles. The analysis categorises multiple sustainability views and outlines three conceptualisations of sustainability marketing: Auxiliary Sustainability Marketing (which focusses on the production of sustainable products), Reformative Sustainability Marketing (which extends the auxiliary approach through the promotion of sustainable lifestyles and behavioural changes) and Transformative Sustainability Marketing (which further extends the auxiliary and reformative approaches through the need for transformation of current institutions and norms, and critical reflection). This paper then discusses how these three conceptualisations might be used by scholars and practitioners to interpret and implement sustainability marketing going forward.     

A Conceptual Model of Political Market Orientation

SUMMARY

This article proposes eight constructs of a conceptual model of political market orientation, taking inspiration from the business and political marketing literature. Four of the constructs are ‘behavioural’ in that they aim to describe the process of how information flows through the organisation. The remaining four constructs are attitudinal, designed to capture the awareness of members to the activities and importance of stakeholder groups in society, both internal and external to the organisation. The model not only allows the level of a party's political market orientation to be assessed, but also aids the party in making a context-specific decision with regard to the reallocation–or not–of party resources in order to attain the party's long-term objectives.     

Images of Freedom and Equality: A Values Analysis of Hungarian Political Commercials

Abstract

In Central Europe's first free election, Hungarian campaign architects created a genre of television advertising designed to communicate political party values by linking them with values of national importance. Using Rokeach's two-value typology, this culture-based study analyzes the political commercials produced by the nation's predominant parties in 1990 for their values-related content. Hungarian scholars, media experts and party officials contributed to this interpretive analysis of the campaign's visual images for their reflection of national and political values. Results suggest that political commercials are useful for identifying prevailing values and can contribute to an understanding of a nation's culture. The study has particular importance for advertisers in countries which are undergoing the transition to a free-market economy.     

Performing brand identity: situating branding in discursive-ideological landscapes

Through a discourse-analytic case study, this paper traces the socio-historical development of Singapore to examine how the branding trajectory and discourse of Singapore’s university sector from the 1990s to the present day have been shaped by an evolving local and transnational discursive-ideological landscape. It provides an empirical demonstration of the unfolding of the logic of neoliberal marketization seen across the globe, but here, particularly, as instantiated in Singapore and its university landscape, played out in and through the lexicogrammatical features and visual semiotic choices that constitute the universities’ branding discourse. The paper shows that particular brands at the intersections of marketing and state/capital regulation are effective barometers of political ethos, governance and direction in the context of a strong state simultaneously subject to a broader neoliberal governmentality, as well as sites where (shifting) relations of power and negotiations of identity play out in times of sociocultural change and ideological contention.     

Marketing and politics: Models, behavior, and policy implications

The American presidential election is one of the largest, most expensive, and most comprehensive marketing efforts. Despite this fact, marketing scholars have largely ignored this campaign, as well as thousands of others for congresspersons, senators, and governors. This article describes the growth of interest in research issues related to political marketing. This emerging research area lies at the crossroads of marketing and political science, but these fields have developed largely independent of one another with little cross-fertilization of ideas. We discuss recent theoretical, empirical, and behavioral work on political campaigns, integrating perspectives from marketing and political science. Our focus is on (1) the extent to which paradigms used in goods and services marketing carry over to the institutional setting of political campaigns, (2) what changes are necessary in models and methodology to understand issues in political marketing and voter behavior, and (3) how the special setting of politics may help us gain a better understanding of certain topics central to marketing such as advertising, branding, and social networks.     

Political Campaign Advertising: Believe It or Not

SUMMARY

The extent that political advertising in elections is believed by voters' is an important issue for public policy, political marketing, and marketing in general. Much effort and funding is devoted to communicating with voters' during elections via advertising. This study examined political advertising believability and three potential antecedents of believability during an election. The data were gathered via a random sample of voters immediately following an election and the results indicate that believability is influenced by a voters' involvement, perceived control and satisfaction and that party preference plays a key role in believability of competing campaigns.     

Corporate social responsibility as cultural meaning management: a critique of the marketing of ‘ethical’ bottled water

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so-called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three-step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo-liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories.     

What is the Right Supply Chain for Your Shopper? Exploring the Shopper Service Ecosystem

The emergence of shopper marketing represents a major strategic force in consumer goods branding and retailing, and poses significant challenges to pre existing supply chain thought that most scholars have yet to address. In order to address the marketing and supply chain challenges presented by shopper marketing initiatives, scholars from both disciplines can find common ground by focusing on the shopper instead of consumers or products. The issue is no longer one of matching a supply chain to a product. Instead, marketers and supply chain managers need to ask, “What's the right supply chain for our shopper?” The shopper service ecosystem framework developed in this paper brings together the service dominant logic of marketing with the service ecosystem perspective in supply chain management. Future research frontiers suggest research directions that bridge the marketing and supply chain disciplines to create a multidisciplinary foundation for future research in the shopper marketing realm.     

Local Political Marketing in the Context of the Conservative Party

Local political marketing can be defined as marketing related strategy, activities, and tactics implemented by a political party in a local geographic constituency, in order to attempt to maximize aggregate potential voter satisfaction, and therefore maximize total number of votes and electoral support in the constituency. Through 12 in-depth interviews with Local Constituency Party representatives from the Conservative Party, the study found that local political marketing was acknowledged by a majority of respondents although this was not unequivocal, and was frequently conflated with campaigning. Local political marketing was associated with: visual identity, language/messages, values, image, communication devices, awareness raising, data management and targeting, and simplification. The support from higher levels of the party in local political marketing was varied across constituencies. There was evidence of growing coordination/influence by higher levels of the party in local political marketing. However, this tended to be in seats judged as ‘winnable’.     

Religion,humanism, marketing,and the consumption of socially responsible products,services, and ideas: Introduction to a special topic section

This introduction to the special issue provides an overview and brief summary of the eight articles that follow and take up the issue's theme. Despite the fact that religion and religious world views exert considerable influence on consumer attitudes and behavior, mainstream business journals have presented little research that explores the relationship between religion and marketing. Articles featured in this special issue examine three themes of interest: (1) the influence of strongly held religious or non-religious world views on the marketing of socially responsible behaviors; (2) how religious world views influence the conduct of marketing; and (3) what marketing scholars can learn from the marketing practices of various religious organizations. The authors extend a note of appreciation to the reviewers of the many papers submitted to the issue and to the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Business Research, Arch Woodside.     

The Relationship Rhombus: A Quadratic Relationship

Affinity marketing is highly focused cause related marketing which bridges the divide between commercial companies and organizations, places, or groups which have supporters and /or members and followers, rather than shareholders and customers. Consumers purchase from an organization, which they currently have no relationship with through the strength of their affinity towards a group to which they are linked. In affinity marketing a ready-made relationship is taken by one party and adapted for 'own use' and this raises the issue of who takes and adapts and for what purpose? This paper introduces the concept of affinity marketing, using the example of the affinity credit card to explain the complications of affinity relationships. Having explained the triadic nature of the affinity credit card relationship it then takes this one step further to discuss the development of a further quadratic, rhomboidal relationship.     

The Marketing Campaign: The British General Election of 2005

Political marketing was a key factor in the 2005 campaign, but more for its ineffectiveness than for its success. The use of marketing techniques such as segmentation and targeting was prolific, however the extent to which the parties adopted the marketing concept was limited. The impact of Labour's Big Conversation and 'Team Labour' campaign approach was always going to be hindered by Tony Blair's perceived dismissal of party and voter opinion on the Iraq War and top-up fees; appointing a marketing director to work on the presentation rather than the design of policy, combined with a highly negative campaign, was never going to win the election for the Tories. The lessons of electoral history – and marketing - were proved right once again: only if parties fully embrace the marketing philosophy and comprehensively design their behaviour by reflecting and responding to public demand. Nevertheless the key to future success for UK parties is to bring back ideology: market-oriented politics should also include using party principles and leadership judgement in order to be able to produce a distinctive response to the public concerns that is both popular and credible.     

Explications of political market orientation and political brand orientation using the resource-based view of the political party

Abstract

This paper adopts the resource-based view of the firm as a platform for an examination of three important political party capabilities: proactive political market orientation, responsive political market orientation, and political brand orientation. We develop a theoretical argument outlining the importance of the complementarity between these capabilities. The approach taken illustrates the links between political market orientation, using what we label as responsive political market orientation, proactive political market orientation, and political brand orientation by building on the marketing literature. We suggest that our treatment of political market orientation is important in helping to understand better its role within the resource-based view of the party. Further, it also aides in understanding political market orientation and branding in political marketing by parties within the context of competitive strategies and electoral performance.     

How policy positions women entrepreneurs: A comparative analysis of state discourse in Sweden and the United States

This research compares the positioning of women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship policy over two decades (1989–2012) in Sweden and the United States. Given Sweden's uniquely family-friendly welfare state, we could expect different results, yet in both countries we find a legacy of discourse subordinating women's entrepreneurship to other goals (i.e., economic growth) and a positioning of women as ‘other’, reinforcing a dialogue of women's inadequacy or extraordinariness without taking full account of the conditions shaping women's work experience. From this analysis we derive a conceptual schematic of assumptions presented through the discourse, aligning and distinguishing the U.S. and Swedish approaches.     

Organisational ambidexterity and firm performance: burning research questions for marketing scholars

ABSTRACT

Organisational ambidexterity is an important topic in management research having grown meteorically over the past 17 years. Yet, very few studies in marketing examine organisational ambidexterity. Where studies do exist, seldom do they do justice to its theoretical richness and complexity. This complexity is a significant hurdle for scholars and managers alike, but theory and practice on organisational ambidexterity can benefit substantively from the input of scholars outside the realm of management. This paper provides scholars and managers with a detailed analyses, documentary and corpus of reference material documenting the development, definition, theoretical assumptions and conceptual treatment, measurement and empirical findings to do with organisational ambidexterity. Drawing on this detailed analysis, the paper identifies the burning research questions marketing scholars should give urgent attention to advance theory and practice on organisational ambidexterity.     

Country Resources,Country Image,and Exports: Country Branding and International Marketing Implications

ABSTRACT

A country's economic, political, and socio-cultural institutions have always been regarded as important determinants of a company's exports and international marketing strategies. With the recent thinking about countries becoming more like a brand, these factors should impact a country's marketing and branding strategies. There has been a call for more research on how countries can use their institutions and resources to enhance their globalization efforts. This study intends to fill this gap by examining the relationships between country institutions and resources, country image, and exports based on institution theory and resource advantage theory. Both archival and primary data for 24 countries over 12 years (1995–2006) were used to assess a random-effects panel data model. The results reveal the significance of economic development and communication infrastructure on exports. In addition, country image was found to indirectly affect exports. The theoretical and practical implications on country branding and international marketing conclude the article.     

The moral discourse of banks about money laundering: an analysis of the narrative from Paul Ricoeur's philosophical perspective

In this paper, we will use Ricoeur's philosophy in order to present money laundering as a metaphor and a narrative. We will firstly analyze the corporate moral discourse of 10 banks about money laundering. We have selected 10 banks that have codes of ethics and a corporate moral discourse about money laundering. The banks come from six countries: United States (2), Canada (2), Switzerland (2), Spain (2), Germany (1), and Belgium (1). We will see how their moral discourse about money laundering contributes to deepen the understanding of money laundering as a narrative. Then, we will see to what extent Ricoeur's philosophy could help us to better understand the moral discourse of banks. We will describe the main components of money laundering as a narrative.     

Reconciling marketing with political science: Theories of political marketing

This paper has two broad aims: to trace the theoretical development of political marketing and then demonstrate how these concepts can be used in the analysis of election campaigns. Electioneering is not the sole manifestation of marketing in politics but it is the most obvious, a point underlined by recent work addressing the prominent role now played by political marketing in a parliamentary democracy like Britain. Whilst much of this material understandably concentrates on the once neglected work of campaign practitioners, the more theoretical explorations of the intersection between marketing and politics have tended to appear in management journals. This paper intends to explore the relationship from a political science perspective.     

Behavioural psychology,marketing and consumer behaviour: a literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

Psychology, along with a wide range of other academic disciplines, has influenced research in both consumer behaviour and marketing. However, the influence of one area of psychology – namely, behaviourism – on research on consumers and marketing has been less prominent. Behaviourism has influenced consumer and marketing research through the application of classical and operant conditioning, matching and foraging theories, amongst other frameworks, during the past 50 years. This article provides a review of research and applications of behavioural psychology in the area, as well as a brief introduction of behavioural psychology for scholars unfamiliar with the area. The article also suggests avenues for further research examining the potential development of behavioural psychology approaches for both consumer and marketing researchers.