Advertising and the seven sins of memory

A positive intention may be formed as a result of exposure to an advertisement, but if a memory malfunction interferes with that intention, the advertising will be ineffective.This paper considers the implications for advertisers of Daniel Schacter’s ‘seven sins of memory’: transcience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence. Each of the ‘sins’ is explained in detail and advice provided for advertisers on how to avoid these pitfalls.     

Foreign Investors in The Netherlands: Heterogeneous Employment and Productivity Effects

Recent academic research suggests that the effects of inward foreign direct investment for productivity and employment may vary across foreign investors with different characteristics. Using a newly created dataset that integrates micro-level information from The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency and Statistics Netherlands, this paper explores the role of several of these characteristics, including e.g. the country of origin, activities and tasks, age and strategic role of foreign affiliates in The Netherlands in the 2000–2007 period. Our analysis shows that important employment and productivity differences exist for nearly all these dimensions.     

A model of brand awareness and brand attitude advertising strategies

A model is described that helps guide advertising strategy, based upon careful attention to brand awareness and brand attitude. In this model, an important distinction is drawn between recognition brand awareness and recall brand awareness. Brand attitude strategy is seen as reflecting an interaction between a potential consumer's involvement with the purchase decision and the underlying motivation to purchase. Applications of the model are discussed.     

Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx,Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation

Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.