Reproducing “rhetrickery” in online fertility marketing: harnessing the “rhetoric of the possible”

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the gap in research on visual and narrative persuasion in online fertility marketing contexts and reveals their reliance on rhetorical ruses embedded in the language of “choice” and “empowerment”. We assess four websites targeting women and men who have experienced infertility and expose their “digirhetrickery”, or use of deceptive rhetoric in digital space which exploits gendered stereotypes of the female body in ways that ultimately mislead their target markets about assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the “liberatory” potential they offer. We advance digital rhetoric as an analytical method to the field of consumer research in order to engage in a reflexive analysis that reveals these underhand ideological operations. As “authorial voices” and narrative agents in digital advertising discourse are more cunningly subterranean, this study shows how the instrumentalization of “consumer empowerment” has become increasingly hyperbolic with particularly problematic consequences for infertile women consumers.     

Frank J. Byrne. Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820 1865

Eschewing business history for a cultural exploration of merchantfamilies, Frank J. Byrne provides a twenty-two county sampleand numerous primary sources to showcase southern merchantsanxiously working for their social position in the antebellumand Civil War years. He argues that southern traders' processof Becoming Bourgeois was incomplete before 1865, but that theirliberal capitalist values increased in significance, layingthe foundations for the New South. This interesting investigationof merchant culture and families echoes the newest historicalresearch     

Fred Turner. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

The Whole Earth Catalog provided the commune-dwellers of the1960s with a forum in which to discuss tools and systems forbuilding alternative life styles. From Counterculture to Cybercultureexplains why and how the Catalog's perspective on tools andsystems became a dominant paradigm for information networksand the technology industry. Using archival material and hisown interviews with many key figures, Fred Turner has writtenan engrossing and in-depth account of the role the Catalog andits founder, Stewart Brand, played     

Wage Effects of Trade Reform with Endogenous Worker Mobility

In this paper, we use a linked employer–employee database from Brazil to evaluate the wage effects of trade reform. With an aggregate (firm-level) analysis of this question, we find that a decline in trade protection is associated with an increase in average wages in exporting firms relative to domestic firms, consistent with earlier studies. However, using disaggregated, employer–employee level data, and allowing for the endogenous assignment of workers to firms due to match-specific productivity, we find that the premium paid to workers at exporting firms is economically and statistically insignificant, as is the differential impact of trade openness on the wages of workers at exporting firms relative to otherwise identical workers at domestic firms. We also find that workforce composition improves systematically in exporting firms, in terms of the combination of worker ability and the quality of worker–firm matches, post-liberalization. These results stand in stark contrast to the findings reported in many earlier studies and underscore the importance of endogenous matching and, more generally, non-random labor market allocation mechanisms, in determining the effects of trade policy changes on wages.     

Sustainable marketing,equity, and economic growth: a resource-advantage,economic freedom approach

Sustainable marketing may be viewed as marketing that is within, and supportive of, sustainable economic development. Peattie (The Marketing Review 2(2):129–146, 2001) maintains that sustainable economic development poses major challenges for marketing. These challenges concern futurity, equity, and needs/wants. This article focuses on the equity and needs/wants challenges of sustainable development and argues that public policies and programs (of wealthy nations, poor countries, or bodies such as the United Nations) can improve economic equity by promoting the economic growth of poor countries. Furthermore, it argues that a major reason why past efforts to promote the economic growth of poor countries have so often failed is that such (allegedly) pro-growth policies have been guided by an impoverished theory of economic growth. Specifically, this article (1) discusses the implications of sustainable development for marketing, (2) shows seven ways that sustainable marketing and resource-advantage (R-A) theory intersect, (3) argues that the cause of sustainable marketing is furthered by promoting economic growth, (4) identifies the two major, radically different, theories of economic growth: neoclassical, static-equilibrium growth theory and dynamic competition growth theory, (5) shows how the two theories make four radically different, testable predictions, and (6) reviews the empirical evidence concerning the four predictions. The article concludes that the equity and needs/wants challenges of sustainable development and the cause of sustainable development more generally can be addressed by poor nations pursuing economic growth, which in turn implies that public policy should focus not on increasing investment, but on institutions that favor economic freedom and dynamic competition.     

Price Discrimination and Pricing to Market Behavior of Canadian Canola Exporters

The role of exchange rate fluctuation on the pricing behavior of Canadian canola exporters to Japan, Mexico, and the U.S. is examined using a model identifying noncompetitive and exchange rate related pricing behavior. Price discrimination was identified for Canadian canola exports to the three destinations over the period of 1993–99. Results also suggest that Pricing to Market strategies were employed for Japanese imports. Canadian canola exporters used local currency price stabilization to dampen the effects of relative price changes in the Japanese currency, perhaps linked to the large size of Japanese imports relative to Mexico and the U.S.     

Who Uses Intermediaries in International Trade? Evidence from Firm‐level Survey Data

The present paper uses data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey conducted in Turkey in 2005 to shed light on the firms that use intermediaries in international trade. It lends robust empirical support to recent theories which suggest that indirect exporters are mostly small firms that are not profitable enough to cover the high fixed costs of building an own distribution network abroad. Manufacturers who develop new products are more likely to use trade intermediaries, as are firms that produce low‐quality goods. In contrast, neither foreign ownership nor credit constraints are correlated with the choice of export mode. Moreover, firms that rely on trade intermediaries to sell their goods abroad also do so to source their foreign inputs, implying that the role of intermediaries in facilitating trade may be larger than previous studies suggest.     

The Roles of Independent Research and Technology Organizations in the United Kingdom's Technology Transfer Mechanism to SMEs

Independent Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) provide an increasing proportion of the UK's technology services requirements. RTOs, often former state research establishments spun out into the private sector, provide technology consulting and networking services to specific sectors or for generic technologies; some are membership-based organizations while others work for contract clients. In this paper we explore the roles and services provided by RTOs, together with the measures being taken to assist small firms that, for many RTOs, form a new and challenging market. The diversity of services and approaches to SMEs are related, in part, to the different origins of RTOs. The research indicates three forms of technology services market failure that suggest a need for ongoing external support for the market's mechanism.     

A cognitive and behavioral hierarchical decision‐making model of college students' alcohol consumption

This study examined college students' drinking behaviors from a consumer behavioral perspective. A consumer‐oriented, cognitive, and behavioral‐hierarchical decision‐making model was developed and tested with the use of structural equation modeling. Questionnaires were collected from undergraduate students ( n = 269) attending a large state university in the southwestern United States. Results indicated that personal values can serve as significant predictors of the attitudes college students have toward alcohol use, which in turn can predict intentions to drink. Results also indicated that intentions to drink are strongly related to actual alcohol consumption, and that gender‐predicted attitudes and alcohol use during the past month influences intentions to drink. However, the structure of the model was similar after controlling for gender differences in alcohol use and for the stability of past behavior. The model delineated the specific roles played by personal values (self‐actualizing values vs. social–hedonic values) and attitudes toward the physical and psychological consequences of drinking. Overall, social–hedonic values and psychological consequences predicted actual alcohol consumption far better than did self‐actualizing values and physical consequences, respectively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Autotelic need for touch,haptics, and persuasion: The role of involvement

Previous research has shown that a touch or haptic element attached to a persuasive appeal can increase persuasion, particularly for individuals who have a clear preference for touch to enjoy its sensory feedback (high autotelics). This research extends previous work by including involvement in the context of an appeal by a nonprofit. We find, in an experiment where we manipulate involvement, that when a haptic element is present, high autotelics are more persuaded regardless of their involvement with the message. However, for low autotelics, a haptic element increases persuasion under conditions of low versus high involvement with the message. A second experiment measures involvement and finds that again, under low involvement conditions, both high and low autotelics are persuaded by a touch element. Finally, a field study with a local symphony orchestra is conducted in which involvement with the message is low but involvement with the company is high. In this case, a touch element is only persuasive for high autotelics. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.