The fashion engagement grid: understanding men's responses to fashion advertising

This study examines how men who are interested in fashion interpret fashion advertisements. Data are garnered from interviews with adult men who regularly read fashion magazines and buy fashion clothing. Findings reveal that men process fashion advertisements through the same five modes as women. The current study also demonstrates that men's responses to fashion advertisements can be categorized through the Fashion Engagement Grid which examines men's characterizations of and motivations for fashion behavior. This study expands theoretical understandings of gender in advertising research and recommends advertising elements to attract male consumers.     

Football – marketplace icon?

Football has always been an important part of consumer culture, in many countries producing a global audience for World Cups and millions of people celebrating annual football competitions. It was once described by iconic Liverpool Football Club (FC) football manager Bill Shankly as follows, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” This marketplace icon contribution puzzles over whether football truly represents a marketplace icon and if so how does this effect the world’s most popular sports game? The commentary explores the significance of the beautiful game asking the reader to consider that it is not only a marketplace icon but much more than that, likened here to a “supra socio-cultural phenomenon” which rises above market logic or as Foer argues Football explains the world.     

论市场消费需求流行

消费者的需求具有可诱导性。而消费者的潜在需求转化为现实需求 ,是与消费市场文化及流行品有着重要的联系。市场消费需求流行是一种时尚的需求 ,是市场消费规律的一种表现形式。在众多企业产品与国际流行日渐接轨的市场形势下 ,研究市场消费需求流行的特性状态与扩散因素 ,是企业市场营销的重要课题和论证方法     

品牌性别如何影响品牌时尚——一个跨行业多品牌实证研究

可从品牌管理语境审视社会学、文化学领域关于时尚与性别关系的规范性价值判断,引入消费者性别和品牌类别两个调节变量,借鉴荣格原型梦验证方法,利用多行业、多类别品牌调查数据考查时尚品牌性别气质。结果发现,时尚在所有品牌特征变量中表现最为鲜明,具有原型特征和意义;品牌女性和中性气质对品牌时尚性的正向影响远高于品牌男性气质的影响,消费者生理性别对此无调节效应,消费者气质性别仅对品牌女性和男性气质有较弱调节效应,对品牌中性气质无调节效应,显示了品牌性别对品牌时尚作用模式的稳定性;品牌类别调节效应显著,与新品牌相比,老字号时尚性较弱,且受品牌女性和男性气质影响较大,品牌中性气质同样不受调节,因此老字号提升时尚感宜弱化其传统、严肃的男性历史印象,增加品牌女性和中性气质。性别气质的复杂性、生物进化的雌性选择理论可以解释这一商业现象的生物和社会学基础,即为何品牌女性和中性气质对品牌时尚性的影响高于品牌男性气质。这为品牌时尚管理提供了一个性别视角,即营造时尚不仅要在品牌图形、字体、发音、代言人等可见层面进行性别调整,更要全面发挥和协同女性智慧,而这不仅需要女性管理者更多参与,而且需要男性管理者借鉴吸收女性智慧和思维。     

The electric guitar – marketplace icon

The electric guitar is an ubiquitous part of contemporary consumer culture. In this Marketplace Icons contribution, we illuminate the iconicity of the electric guitar and what lies behind its thick layers of distorted riffs, mad soloing escapades and eccentric onstage performances, specifically within the rock genre. The genesis of electric guitar playing involves a series of technological alterations of the guitar that freed it from a mere background instrument allowing for new musical roles. It quickly became apparent that all the technical solutions designed to get rid of what was defined as unwanted noise could be turned “against” the clean tone and instead be used to create a unique sound. The control of these noise elements, such as feedback and distortion, became a core element of mastering the modern electric guitar. Rather than just being a marketplace icon, we argue that the electric guitar is fetishized because both its audio quality – the loudness and the potential roughness of the sound – and its visual looks and onstage performances symbolizes youthful rebellion, the essence of rock and roll.     

大众文化视域下的社会主义意识形态建设研究

意识形态作为社会意识的内容,是社会存在的反映,并且以文化形式出现;而文化作为意识形态产生的土壤,反映了意识形态制约下具体的社会生活现象。在当今社会,意识形态正在由人们的世界观或思想概念向大众日常生活经验本身转变。社会主义意识形态功能的发挥要以大众的日常生活世界为基础,又要对日常生活世界进行引导和提升。在当代中国,就大众文化对社会主义意识形态的双重影响来看,社会主义意识形态建设须实现其内容形式的大众化、传播方式的媒体化、宣传普及的商品化、影响范围的全球化。     

Royalty: marketplace icons

The term “royalty” connotes people who either occupy the role of monarchs in society, or who are related to these figures by blood or marriage. Although many royal houses around the world occupy a symbolic/ceremonial rather than a political role, royalty and the “human brands” royal families contain remain important sources of aspirational and conspicuous consumption. In this essay, we focus on how the British Royal Family Brand (BRFB; Otnes, Cele C. and Pauline Maclaran. 2015. Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.) has remained the most visible and impactful royal variant in the world, even as its economic and political influence, and that of Britain, has waned. We discuss the influence of the BRFB in fueling consumption practices pertaining to commemorative purchasing and collecting, heritage management, perpetuating mass and social media narratives, supporting and perpetuating brands, and spawning and maintaining touristic trends. We observe that successful royal influence is due in part to the ability to leverage key universal narratives (e.g. the triumph of the underdog) and to tap into consumers’ desires to vicariously or actively engage with lifestyles typically accessible only to people who occupy the highest social stratum in their respective cultures. We discuss the implications of royalty on consumer culture, and suggest areas of future research.     

H&M – documenting the story of one of the world's largest fashion retailers

The interest of fashion companies in documenting their history has been almost non-existent in Sweden until recently. For the Centre for Business History in Stockholm, the commission to secure the history of Sweden's largest fashion company and one of the world's largest fashion retailers, H&M, therefore offers new challenges. This study analyses the methods being used in this project. Apart from collecting, saving and digitising all existing documents from the company's 60 year-history, the documentation will be based on a considerable number of interviews with past and current employees. These oral history interviews will deal with a number of questions important to scholars doing contemporary business history.     

Exploring Japanese consumers’ cultural meanings and consumption of American fashion

The purpose of this research is to explore how Japanese consumers perceive American fashion and how this perception is related to the purchase of American fashion products based on Consumer Culture Theory. For this research, cultural meanings of American fashion in Japanese fashion market were collected and analyzed using a thematic analysis method through Japanese consumers’ online postings and discussions. Results showed Japanese consumers perceived American fashion to (1) be economical/causal and lack fashion sense, (2) have different fashion trends for celebrities and general population, and (3) be individualistic without obvious fashion trends. This research also found Japanese consumers preferred American fashion for four reasons: (1) preference for American casual fashion styles, (2) emulation of existing styles of American celebrities, (3) availability of styles and sizes for non-regular Japanese body size, and (4) unique fashion styles rare in the Japanese fashion market. On the other hand, Japanese consumers identified various reasons why they are reluctant to consume American fashion. Three reasons include (1) different styles, (2) different aesthetics views due to different body sizes, and (3) reluctance to conform to current American fashion styles in the Japanese fashion market.