Cast Awayand the Contradictions of Product Placement

Abstract

This essay looks at implications of product placement in Cast Away, the 2000 film in which Tom Hanks plays a Federal Express executive who is stranded on a desert island before making his way back home. It argues that Cast Awayis a particularly valuable case study because of the conflict between its relentless product placement and its dark vision of contemporary global capitalism. The article investigates four aspects of global capitalism addressed by Cast Away: the compression of time, the compression of space, the rising influence of multinational corporations, and the dominance of consumer culture.     

Celebrity versus film persona endorsements: Examining the effect of celebrity transgressions on consumer judgments

This study introduces film personas (e.g., Hermione Granger, Jack Sparrow, Bridget Jones) as effective brand endorsers. A three study, mixed‐method approach is used. Results show that a film persona (e.g., Legolas, from Lord of The Rings, vs. celebrity, Orlando Bloom) is a more (less) effective endorser (i.e., resulting in more positive attitudinal and behavioral judgments). Exploratory findings indicate that this may be due to film personas possessing a tight (vast) association set, which is more (less) easily transferred onto the endorsed brand. Results of this study also illustrate that endorsed brands are shielded from the negative effects of celebrity transgressions when they are featured as their film persona in an endorsement. This study has important implications for advertisers in the choice and execution of their advertisements featuring celebrities.     

Organizational culture and the tolerance of corruption: the case of South Korea

ABSTRACT

There has been long term and widespread criticism of organizational corruption around the world. This also includes South Korea with many examples, both historical and current. This is underpinned by several elements but an important and high profile factor is a seeming creation and tolerance of corruption by the large, diversified, dynastic family-owned and run conglomerates – the chaebol – and their nexus with the political elite. This study examines if there is any relationship between organizational culture and the tolerance of corruption within Korean firms. For this purpose, we chose four cultural traits as independent variables: large power distance, the government–business relationship, hereditary management and naembi culture, along with the tolerance of corruption as a dependent variable. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey and we used regression analysis to test our four hypotheses. According to the results, all our hypotheses received statistical support which implies these four cultural characteristics positively affect the tolerance of corruption within firms. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.     

Does international capital flow lead to a housing boom? A time-varying evidence from China

This paper examines the causal relationship between the housing prices (HP) and the international capital flows (ICF) in China. With structural changes existing, we find that long-run relationship using full-sample data is unstable, suggesting that traditional Granger causality test is not reliable. However, we further find an unstable short-run relationship between ICF and HP when assessing the stability of the parameters and there are bidirectional causal relationships between ICF and HP for several sub-periods. Additionally, our findings indicate both positive and negative bidirectional causal relations between the series. Based on the arbitrage of ICF, the results suggest that the rise of Chinese HP is the underlying force for the inflows of international capital. Meanwhile, a surge in capital inflows may be accompanied by a rise in the price of housing. This confirms the theoretical analysis that there is an interconnected transmission mechanism between the ICF and the HP, which is diverse and depends both on the flow of ICF and on other factors.     

The Theoretical Ground for Public Relations Practice and Ethics: A Koehnian Analysis

Public relations literature laments the lack of a theoretical base for the practice and ethics of public relations. Drawing primarily upon Koehn (The Ground of Professional Ethics, 1994) and Hutton (Public Relations Review, 1999), this paper proposes such a theoretical ground.The paper adopts Hutton's assertion that "the central organizing theme of public relations theory and practice" is relationships(Hutton, 1999, p. 209). It also relies upon Koehn (1994) to provide a theoretical discussion of the nature of professions, and the ground upon which professional ethics and public trust in the professions are based. It concludes, from a Koehnian perspective, that for public relations to move from the expertise and contractual models of practice into a covenantal model as a profession worthy of public trust, the field must devote itself to a defined human good (relationships), and must be grounded in a public pledge to serve this good.     

‘Consuming Responsibility: The Search for Value at Laskarina Holidays’

This paper provides an alternative theoretical conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to further our understanding of prosocial organisational behaviour. We argue that consumption provides a perspective that enables theorists to escape the confines of existing CSR literature. In our view the organisation is re-imagined as an arena of consumption where employees are engaged in a quest for value, constructing and confirming their identities as consumers. Using the award-winning tour operator Laskarina Holidays as an illustrative case, it is suggested that CSR can provide combinations of functional, social, emotional, epistemic and conditional value. This new perspective on CSR facilitates the coexistence of a plurality of values that are relativistically constructed and narrativised by organisational stakeholders. Our consumption paradigm provides a thought provoking means of reconciling divergent perspectives and encourages further interdisciplinary research. We argue that future research should begin, not by asking the question of why organisations assume responsibility, but by contemplating the notion of why organisations consume responsibility.     

Developing A Framework for EthicallyQuestionable Behavior in Consumption

In light of the growing interest in "ethically questionable" consumer behavior, this study explores possible explanations of the occurrence of such behaviour, and subsequently develops a theoretical framework. The study is based upon data collected from 72 U.K. consumers, acquired from a projective approach with scenarios. Taking the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as an initial analytical framework, attitude, social influence, opportunity(as perceived behavioral control in TPB) and perceived unfairnessare identified as the antecedents of ethically questionable behavior (EQB). Social influenceis extended to include a broader range of external influences from subjective norm in TPB. Opportunityis considered to represent an aspect of perceived behavioral control as available resource to engage in EQB. Perceived unfairnessis presented as an additional component and refers to the extent to which an actor is motivated to redress an imbalance that is perceived as unfair. Binary logistic models suggest that attitudeand social influenceconsistently impact on EQB, as TPB would predict. Analysis of variance suggests that perceived unfairnessand opportunity, though context specific, also show signs of significant influence on the acceptance and practice of this behavior. Additional to the construct of TPB, this study develops the dimension of perceived unfairnessin the context of EQB decision-making. In the context of TPB, it provides further insight into our understanding of EQB, helping to provide a theoretical framework.     

Developing a New Theory of Frontline Manufacturer-Retailer Relationships for Consumer Packaged Goods

Purpose: Frontline employees from consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, and the retailers’ employees who they interact with, play a crucial role in the in-store execution of product promotions and in ensuring that products are available for shoppers. This article investigates the development of interpersonal relationships between these frontline actors at the store-level of analysis and how these relationships influence in-store processes. We consider the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for sales force recruiting and sales management in the CPG retail channel.

Methodology/approach: Frontline relationships and in-store execution remain relatively under researched fields in the sales management and retail literatures. Given the lack of a well-established theoretical framework, we conducted a qualitative study in the grounded theory research tradition. We interviewed frontline personnel from manufacturers and retailers, their immediate managers and headquarters personnel and other industry experts. We took a holistic approach to data collection; also gathering other types of written, photo and video data for the purpose of iterative data analysis and developing a mid-range theory of relationship development between manufacturer representatives and retailer employees, the frontline employees tasked with executing marketing and merchandising strategies in the store.

Findings: We develop a model of frontline relationship development and performance consisting of 4 distinct stages: (1) working alongside, (2) building respect, (3) cooperative relationship (helping hands), and (4) collaborative partnership. We compare our findings with existing relationship marketing and relationship management theories. We find that an alternative theoretical framework may suit the particularities of the CPG retail channel better.

Research implications: This article provides insight into a very specific but important type of business-to-business relationships in the CPG retail channel that have seen little scholarly attention. It calls for re-evaluating the relevance of existing relationship marketing and sales management paradigms in the CPG retail channel. Future research could investigate the extent to which our model is applicable in sales environments beyond the CPG retail channel.

Practical implications: The study’s findings contribute to the practice of relationship marketing and sales management in the CPG retail channel. We present a case for a different approach of managing manufacturer-retailer relationships at the store level, a more functional tactic, which seems to deliver higher relationship performance than expected under the relationship marketing paradigm prevalent in sales and retail literatures. This different approach has direct consequences for the recruitment and management of a CPG sales force.     

China Speaks Out: How and Why Chinese Employees Use Their Voice toward German Managers

Existing management literature on voice has primarily focused on examining who uses their voice and when it is used, ignoring why employees speak out and how they do so. We examine the conditions under which Chinese employees use their voice toward their German managers at German companies in Mainland China. The findings from our empirical study emphasize the importance of Chinese employees' personal identification with their German managers as a precondition for voice behaviors. Our results suggest that Chinese employees utilize indirect voice behavior in addition to direct voice behavior when interacting with their German managers. This indirect guanxi‐voice behavior has neither been recognized nor investigated in the literature. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Intertextual Construction of Emerging Consumer Culture in China as Observed in the Movie Ermo

Summary

The rapid development of consumer culture in China is chronicled and caricatured in particularly revealing ways in the movie Ermo. It concerns the story of a rural Chinese woman, Ermo, who undergoes a metamorphosis in seeking to make enough money to buy a television set. Since popular culture texts, such as movies, often serve to mirror a culture back to itself, we conducted a discourse analysis of this film. We found that cultural intertextuality, that is the hybridizing construction of global and local meanings, was central. This intertextu-ality had two emergent themes: (1) longstanding versus postmodern narratives and (2) a Sinicization or Chinese indigenization of meanings. Managerial and research implications are drawn which direct marketing efforts toward the needs of Chinese consumers embodied in their indi-genized and particular local expression of new postmodern lifestyles.     

Phronesis in administration and organizations: A literature review and future research agenda

Phronesis is essential for good decision-making and actions. This literature review shows how phronesis has been discussed and related to elements of the field of administration and organizations. A search in the database systems Scopus, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scielo, based on eligibility criteria, resulted in 43 theoretical and 14 empirical works. The analysis of these studies showed the most significant empirical contributions, the most cited authors, methods, journals, and central themes addressed in studies on phronesis to understand ethics in business. From a virtue ethics perspective, we discuss the major theoretical and empirical contributions, as well as the implications of a restricted understanding of phronesis when it is treated apart from other elements of the virtue ethics framework. We present a synthesis of the concepts of phronesis, based on dimensions of magnitude and amplitude of the conceptions, ranging from formal to substantive phronesis, and covering individual, organizational, or societal levels of analysis. We argue that a substantive conception of phronesis within virtue ethics may improve our understanding of ethics because it assumes the interdependence of phronesis and moral virtues, integral anthropology, and the common good. We present a future research agenda, considering the study's limitations and findings.     

Self‐regulation of unwanted consumption

The issue of consumption control is viewed from the perspective of self‐regulation in which successful attempts at controlling problem behaviors depend upon achieving motivational readiness. It is proposed that consumption control can be understood as a series of stage‐related processes that follow from theoretical accounts of self‐regulation contained in the transtheoretical model of change, and the model of action phases. In order to observe ongoing consumption‐control processes, a diary study, in which participants described their actions, thoughts, and feelings in attempting a personal consumption‐control project, was conducted. Diary entries were interpreted in light of theoretical stage‐related processes. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Beating,ditching and hiding: consumers’ everyday resistance to marketing

ABSTRACT

This article illuminates consumers’ views of marketing in light of theories of resistance. It argues that consumers engage in resistance to the power of marketing through their everyday actions and also through the ways they construct their accounts of these actions. It identifies three theoretical approaches to resistance (hegemonic, relational and autonomous). These are used to discuss consumers’ accounts of marketing collected through 78 personal interviews in which participants were asked to describe marketing and provide examples of their experiences with marketing as they defined it. Through this, the study uncovers various forms of consumer resistance, which can often go unnoticed. These are conceptualised through the notion of everyday resistance to marketing and are used to challenge existing marketing theory and develop paths for future research.     

The ethos of business students

Business schools are the “nurseries” of the corporate world. This article offers an empirical analysis of the business student ethos on the basis of research conducted at three Dutch universities. A theoretical framework in the tradition of virtue ethics and dubbed “moral ethology” is used to identify the values business schools convey to their students. The central research question is: What types of ethos do Dutch business students have? Forty-three undergraduate students participated in Q-methodological research, a mixed qualitative–quantitative small-sample method. Five different types of ethos were generated: Do-Good Managers, Market Managers, Searching Managers, Balancing Managers, and Radical Market Managers. Some general characteristics that apply to all the types of ethos were identified, such as the search for efficiency. It is argued that business schools should pay much more attention to the values that are endorsed in both life and business and should help students to address situations in which values are neglected.     

Consumer biases in the perception of organizational greed

This article extends current models of how consumers judge or perceive organizations as greedy using the theoretical framework of motivated moral reasoning. We show that inherent features of an organization (size and ‘black sheep’ status) and its behaviour (relative frequency) bias consumer perceptions of organizational greed. We use an experimental methodology, present subjects with vignettes describing different scenarios, validate our questionnaire using confirmatory factor analysis, and test our hypotheses using a general linear model with covariates. Our findings suggest that consumer perceptions of organizational greed are subject to three effects: the underdog effect (Study 1, n = 496), the black sheep effect (Study 2, n = 229) and the ‘common is moral’ heuristic (Study 3, n = 249). This is the first study to investigate greed under a motivated reasoning paradigm and to show that perceptions of organizational greed are subject to socio-psychological biases. This study also provides advice on branding and positioning strategies that appeal to the underdog status of an organization or its local origins.     

Gay men on film: A typology of the scopophilic consumption pleasures of cultural text

In this paper, drawing on feminist film criticism, cultural theory, and reader response criticism, I discuss the consumption experience of viewing in the context of the analysis and interpretation of Hollywood films that represent gay characters. I then discuss various films in light of these concepts: The Boys in the Band from the 1970s, Cruising from the 1980s, and several films from the “Gay 90s” including Philadelphia and In & Out. Portrayals of gay men have changed dramatically over the years: from those of lonely, sad, and self‐loathing queens to dangerous and perverse leathermen to the very positive and seemingly affirming representations in 1990s films. A theoretical interpretation‐in the form of a typology of scopophilic pleasures‐is offered to further an understanding of these filmic portrayals and the consumption pleasure viewers may derive from watching.     

Thomas Piketty,the Future of Capitalism and the Theory of Distribution: A Review Essay

This essay reviews Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty‐First Century. The focus is upon the conceptual framework and theoretical interpretation of the empirical findings assembled in the book, rather than those empirical findings themselves (which are, in any case, broadly incontestable). The core theoretical logic of the distributional dynamics is explained and subjected to scrutiny with respect to the theory of distribution in particular, but also the theory of growth.     

Do low involved brands have better consumer perception due to product placement in emerging markets?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the product placement in the film on purchase intention, attitude and change in perception. For this study, we selected recently released film and interviewed the film goers after he came out of the theatre through intercept technique. The products have improved brand recall, perception, and brand recommendation, ‘feeling’ towards brands, association and purchase intentions which are our dependent variables in our study. Brand image, country image, value for money and culture affects these dependent variables as per our present study. Low involved products get more mileage from product placement. The effect of product placement in low and high involved brand is explained for the first time through application alternative hierarchy’s theory of Ray et al., Theory of Hovland et al. and Gestalt theory of familiarity. Our paper bridges the gap between theory and practice by suggesting improvement in product placement in non –traditional media like film.