Marketing

This empirical research brings interesting insights concerning mobile commerce. Our objective is to determine the influence of language (conventional language versus short message service (SMS) language) and spokeperson on the effectiveness of SMS advertising. The experiment took place in a virtual community of gamers equipped with cellular telephones. After having exchanged messages during several days in the forum's community, participants received one of four messages (varied with the language and the source of the message) that they evaluated afterward. Our results offer new and significant insights to managers wishing to use this medium. Unlike what is often thought, our results show that SMS language is not always recommended. While known and credible companies could use shortened, original, and entertaining SMS language, little known companies or ordinary spokepersons should refrain from doing so. Thus a message relayed by a spokeperson with little credibility, even if he is a member of the targeted community, should have a sober and clear content with a conventional language.

This paper extends the literatures on both fashion systems and marketplace identity projects by investigating the identity trajectories experienced by women who strive for successful careers as fashion models. It argues that while endconsumers
in a symbolic field such as fashion may experience nearly limitless postmodern potential for identity play, those individuals who strive for positioning in the production systems of such fields have more limited scope for identity construction so long as they remain within the field. Unless they possess or can
acquire significant symbolic and social capital, actors low in power within a field, such as aspiring fashion models, will typically face limited success in sustaining the identity they strive for. The analysis thus traces an arc from identity emergence to identity abandonment. It identifies two routes to identity re-construction, both of which invoke cultural discourses of authenticity to cope with the abandonment
of the identity project within the fashion system. The paper contributes to the marketing literature on fashion systems by focusing on how structured systems of social position matter to individual actors struggling to achieve a certain standing within a symbolic field. At the same time, it furthers our understanding of marketplace identity quests by shedding light on how market actors cope when confronting unsustainable identity projects.

“Arrested emotions” references the capitalist firm’s conscious mobilization of prosumers’ emotions and their associated expressions as amenable input for production within corporate confines. We draw on reality TV – The Bachelor and Extreme Makeover (Home Edition) – to suggest the centrality of emotional
recruitment in the contemporary economy. Reality TV is driven almost entirely by the work of audiences and those in their ranks who are recruited (or volunteer) to become performers. Our observations lead us to conclude that the corporate arrest
of emotions leads to a level of consumer emotional vapidity that is inextricably fused with firm profitability. The firm therefore allows the consumer ample leverage in offering these emotions that are mobilized, packaged and sold back to the consumer.

This article seeks to understand how distinctive family brands are created. Recent studies in family business have focused on the benefits for a firm to be known as family owned or family controlled. Few studies have paid attention to the distinct meanings stakeholders associate with a given family or to how that family comes to have those associations in the eyes of external stakeholders. Based on a case study of one of the entertainment industry’s most successful family brands—The Beckhams—four practices conducive to building brand distinctiveness and brand visibility are identified.

This paper examines the dynamic processes of person branding by conducting an inductive analysis of two case studies of acclaimed athletes: David Beckham and Ryan Giggs. Although their careers have notable similarities and both athletes are regarded as outstanding soccer players, they have contrasting profiles as person brands. An analysis of their on- and off-field brand-building practices helps us understand how people in
sporting professions build brand equity. We offer novel conceptual insights on two elements that characterise athletes’ brands: professional image and mainstream media persona. We provide insights into practices that yield a better professional image and a more valuable mainstream media persona, and
posit connections between these constructs and person brand equity. Finally, we discuss implications for athletes and those managing their brands.

The goal of this research is to compare contemporary representations of masculinity and femininity in two HBO television series, Entourage and Sex and the City, and
illustrate how these representations intersect with consumption. In the analysis, the authors discuss how gender fluidity gives the characters the freedom to be multifaceted in their performances – performances with regard to three emergent themes: domesticity, sexuality, and authenticity. Characters in bothprograms negotiate the tensions between more traditional gender roles and the assumption of contemporary
roles through consumption. The characters find ways to simultaneously re-establish and reinforce their gendered identities as they create new roles, often with the aid of
consumption. On the other hand, it is the consumption itself that is sometimes complicit in creating new tensions.

This paper inductively develops an extension to
brand positioning theory to understand how individuals
seeking work in established organizational fields can effectively
position themselves. It does so by analyzing qualitative
data on the practices of people in one job category
(fashion models) in an established organizational field (fashion),
examining them through the lens of concepts adapted
from work by Pierre Bourdieu. Four brand positioning
practices are identified as relevant for models vying for
work in the fashion field: crafting a portfolio, cultivating
and demonstrating upward affiliations, complying with
occupation-specific behavioral expectations, and conveying
field-conforming tastes. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue
more generally that person brand positioning within established
organizational fields happens through processes that
help to portray a person as having field-specific social and
cultural capital that allows them to “stand out,” while acquiring
the habitus that allows them to comply with field and
occupation-specific expectations in order to “fit in.”
Standing out and fitting in have parallels with—but are not
identical to—the processes of establishing and reinforcing
points of differentiation and points of parity for product
brands. Our study implies that scholars interested in person
branding should further develop theories that illuminate
variations in brand positioning practices between products
and persons. It also suggests that people building person
brands should be sensitized to the valued forms of capital
and normative expectations in their field that enable them to
stand out while fitting in.

This article reports the results of an experimental study examining the impact of three types of sponsor-a private company, a Crown corporation, and a government ministry or department-on consumers' evaluation of cultural sponsorships. This impact was assessed in the context of sponsorship programs that were either philanthropic or commercial, for four different forms of art and cultural events with which the sponsor was either strongly or weakly associated.

En 2005, le mannequin Kate Moss a vécu un scandale médiatique qui a considérablement perturbé son parcours et son image de marque. L'analyse du discours des médias, touchant trois médias distincts durant un an, a permis de mettre en lumière les pratiques d'interprétation des acteurs médiatiques modelant l'image d'une marque affectée par un scandale. Les différents rôles et les pratiques des médias renseignent le gestionnaire d'image de marque sur les démarches à entreprendre lorsque confronté à un scandale.

Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on Amer- ica’s Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand’s identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelgänger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed.

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This paper inductively develops an extension to brand positioning theory to understand how individuals seeking work in established organizational fields can effectively position themselves. It does so by analyzing qualitative data on the practices of people in one job category (fashion models) in an established organizational field (fashion), examining them through the lens of concepts adapted from work by Pierre Bourdieu. Four brand positioning practices are identified as relevant for models vying for work in the fashion field: crafting a portfolio, cultivating and demonstrating upward affiliations, complying with occupation-specific behavioral expectations, and conveying field-conforming tastes. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue more generally that person brand positioning within established organizational fields happens through processes that help to portray a person as having field-specific social and cultural capital that allows them to "stand out," while acquiring the habitus that allows them to comply with fieldand occupation-specific expectations in order to "fit in." Standing out and fitting in have parallels with-but are not identical to-the processes of establishing and reinforcing points of differentiation and points of parity for product brands. Our study implies that scholars interested in person branding should further develop theories that illuminate variations in brand positioning practices between products and persons. It also suggests that people building person brands should be sensitized to the valued forms of capital and normative expectations in their field that enable them to stand out while fitting in.

This paper examines the dynamic processes of person branding by conducting an inductive analysis of two case studies of acclaimed athletes: David Beckham and Ryan Giggs. Although their careers have notable similarities and both athletes are regarded as outstanding soccer players, they have contrasting profiles as person brands. An analysis of their on-and off-field brand-building practices helps us understand how people in sporting professions build brand equity. We offer novel conceptual insights on two elements that characterise athletes' brands: professional image and mainstream media persona. We provide insights into practices that yield a better professional image and a more valuable mainstream media persona, and posit connections between these constructs and person brand equity. Finally, we discuss implications for athletes and those managing their brands.