Barbara B. Stern

Asian-Americans: Television Advertising and the “Model Minority” Stereotype

Abstract Asian-Americans are a growth market. Their affluence, high education, and work ethic position them as a “model minority.” However complimentary that term may seem, it nonetheless represents a stereotype whose prevalence must be documented to examine the intersection of minority status and gender in mass media portrayals. The authors report a content analysis of more than 1300 prime time television advertisements conducted to assess the frequency and nature of Asian-American representation. They found that Asian male and female models are overrepresented in terms of proportion of the population (3.6%), appearing in 8.4% of the commercials. However, Asian models are more likely than members of other minority groups to appear in background roles, and Asian women are rarely depicted in major roles. Further, the findings indicate that portrayals of Asian-Americans put so much emphasis on the work ethic that other aspects of life seldom appear. For example, Asian models are overrepresented in business ...

Literary Criticism and Consumer Research: Overview and Illustrative Analysis

This article proposes literary criticism as a source of insight into consumer behavior, presents a broad overview of literary criticism, provides a specific illustrative analysis, and offers suggestions for further research. Literary analysis of advertising text reveals elements that provide additional information to consumer researchers, and contributions of literary criticisms to consumer research are discussed. Major postwar critical schools are reviewed, and relevant theoretical concepts summarized. An ad for Ivory Flakes is analyzed using a variety of concepts drawn from literary schools, primarily sociocultural and reader-response ones. Suggestions for additional research on content analysis, image analysis, and the history of consumption are made. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.

What Does Brand Mean? Historical-Analysis Method and Construct Definition

This article addresses the meaning of the term brand means by presenting a method of historical analysis and construct definition based on information in theOxford English Dictionary. The method’s use is demonstrated in an analysis of the original meanings that underlie the term’s usage both as a single word and in compounds such as brand competition, brand personality, brand reputation, and so forth. Literal (denotative) definitions and metaphoric (connotative) associations are examined to explain the use of brand to refer to a physical entity and/or a mental representation. The method is also theoretically grounded in the disciplines of philology (the history of words), poetics, rhetoric, and the philosophy of science. The historical-analysis method is applied to the meanings of brand, starting with its original usage about 1,500 years ago and culminating with the definitions used by authors in this special issue.

Narrative Analysis of a Marketing Relationship: The Consumer's Perspective

This article uses narrative analysis to study a marketing relationship elicited hy means of a phenomenological interview. The focal point is the consumers perspective, and the single incident of a marketing encounter is treated as a core event in relationship marketing. The narrative is derived hy means of a phenomenological interview, which provides an in-depth account of a relationship that ends in brand switching. The consumers role is studied by means of narrative analysis, which exposes the consumers script for the relationship. Marketing implications are discussed in terms of the importance of the single encounter, consumer role enactment in a relationship, and the consumers desire for relationships based on emotional satisfaction.

Classical and Vignette Television Advertising Dramas: Structural Models, Formal Analysis, and Consumer Effects

This article identifies and analyzes two types of television advertising dramas: classical and vignette. Drama criticism in theater, film and television is the source used to identify the elements of advertising dramas--narration, plot, story, and character--and to propose models of the two different types. The two models are employed in an empirical analysis of an advertising sample. Consumer effects of classical and vignette dramas are proposed in terms of the attribution theory of persuasion and the elicitation of empathy versus sympathy responses. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

The Role of Myth in Creative Advertising Design: Theory, Process and Outcome

Abstract In an empirical study using five real-world creative teams from an advertising agency, participants were given a strategic brief for a new beverage product and asked to design the layout for a print ad. Think-aloud concurrent protocols obtained from each teams copywriter, art director, and the two working together were analyzed to examine the creative process and its relationship to the created advertisement. Interpretive analyses of the protocols reveal that the teams access culturally available plot patterns but in different ways. In this study and with the particular materials and situational context explored here, four of the five teams chose to pursue a single mythic structure to the apparent detriment of their final product. Only one team engaged in fully diversified idea generation involving a wide range of alternative scenarios. Not coincidentally, as a tentative conclusion, this more flexible team produced the ad judged most successful by advertising professionals. This still-to-be-tested exploratory finding deserves further investigation in future research that embodies various methodological refinements.

Portrayals of African, Hispanic, and Asian Americans in Magazine Advertising

A content analysis of magazine advertisements from 1993 and 1994 is performed to examine advertising portrayals of African, Hispanic, and Asian Americans. The issues investigated are the frequency of portrayal of minority groups, the representation of groups in technical versus nontechnical product categories, and the settings and relationships in which each group appears. Results indicate that (a) Hispanic Americans are significantly underrepresented in magazine advertising, (b) portrayals of Asian Americans reflect societal stereotypes, and (c) portrayals of African Americans have become less stereotyped over the years, but nonetheless remain sufficiently stereotyped to raise societal concerns.

Interpretative Methodology from Art and Literary Criticism: A Humanistic Approach to Advertising Imagery

Departs from traditional positivist approaches to marketing research by adopting interpretative methods to analyse the visual/ verbal elements in print advertisements. Borrows from the humanistic disciplines of art and literary critical theory to show how verbal and visual elements work together as an interpretative Gestalt. Describes the methods briefly, and then illustrates them in detail by means of an exemplar – a Paco Rabanne pour Homme advertisement known as the “man‐in‐bed”. First analyses the exemplar as a verbal text and then as a visual one to demonstrate the way that congruence between the words and pictures reiterates the association between the brand benefit and the images used to convey it. Ends with a call for increased visual literacy in order to further research on advertising from a humanistic perspective.

Sexual identity scale: A new self-assessment measure

An individuals subjective evaluation of sexual identity differs from objective evaluation by sex role researchers. This study reports initial validity and reliability data on a new measure of self-ascribed sexual identity: the Sexual Identity Scale (SIS). SIS considers four functional sex dimensions on the basis of components described in both sex and age role literature. SIS and two modified Bem Sex Role Inventory instruments—a Masculinity Trait Index (MTI) and a Femininity Trait Index (FTI)—were administered to an adult sample of 380 men and 380 women aged 20–80. Reliability, assessed with LISREL VI and Cronbachs alpha, was found to be high. LISREL VI findings provide construct validity, both convergent and divergent. The nature of association of biological sex and sex trait measures, high interitem SIS correlations, as well as divergence from the modified sex trait indices (MTI and FTI) also support validity. The studys results and implications are discussed.

Writing the differences: Poststructural ist pluralism, retextualization, and the construction of reflexive ethnographic narratives in consumption and market research

Representing social realities in a narrative form is central to the interpretive processes by which market‐oriented ethnographies are constructed. In recent years, the process of textualization has shifted from a taken‐for‐granted aspect of the ethnographic enterprise to a central focus of ethnographers’ reflexive considerations. This shift reflects the realization that textualization poses dilemmas of representation that can not be resolved through additional fieldwork or other methodological procedures. This paper addresses these workbench problems by devising an alternative narrative formretextualization‐based on a poststructuralist version of critical pluralistic analysis. We first discuss how non‐realist genres of ethnographic writing have emerged in response to a heightened sensitivity toward ideological positions embedded in research narratives. We then discuss how the use of retextualization can facilitate the development of reflexivity in consumption research by destabilizing the representational...