Janet L. Borgerson

An ethics of representation for international marketing communication

Purpose – This paper offers an ethical analysis of visual representation that provides criteria for and sheds light on the appropriateness dimension of marketing communications. It provides a theoretically informed framework for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in visual representation.Design/methodology/approach – An interdisciplinary conceptual review and analysis focuses on four representational conventions, synthesizing ethical concerns, to provide a broader context for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in marketing representation: face‐ism, idealization, exoticization and exclusion. This framework is discussed and applied to marketing communications.Findings – It argues that valuations of communication appropriateness must be informed by an awareness of the ethical relationship between marketing representations and identity. It is no longer satisfactory to associate advertising solely with persuasion, rather advertising must be seen as a representational system, with pedagogica...

Judith Butler: On Organizing Subjectivities

In this essay, I evoke and explore Butlers potential contribution, providing a broad framework for her work, and, at the same time, focusing on specific concepts from her writings - performativity, iteration, and foreclosure - that have profound implications for researchers. Furthermore, pointing out philosophers working in the phenomenological tradition in which Butler trained, including influential precursors, colleagues, and contemporaries, establishes how issues raised in various fields can be recognized and comprehended in relation to Butlers work more generally. Butlers work (...) - radical as it may seem - responds to classic questions of ontology, philosophy of language, and epistemology. A phenomenological description aimed at opening access to Butler’s notion of the tropological inauguration of the subject – that is, the ‘turning back’ induced by a limiting boundary that brings subjectivity into experience – attempts to place Butler’s central concepts before the reader.

Corporate Communication, Ethics, and Operational Identity: A Case Study of Benetton

This article investigates conceptual and strategic relationships between corporate identity, organizational identity and ethics, utilizing the Benetton Corporation as an illustrative case study. Although much attention has been given to visual aspects of Benettons renowned ethical brand building efforts, few studies have looked at how Benettons employees, retail environments and trade events express ethical aspects of their well-known corporate identity. A multi-method case study, including interviews at retail outlets and trade events, sheds light on several important yet under-studied components of corporate identity, including stakeholders such as retail managers and contract employees. Analysis of Benettons operations revealed disconnection and inconsistency, as well as a failure to communicate ethical values and socially responsible attributes throughout organizational identity. Operational identity emerged as a useful complement to models of corporate identity. We demonstrate the way in which organizations may fail to capitalize on positive aspects of their organizational identity by neglecting their operational identity.

Materiality and the Comfort of Things: Drinks, Dining and Discussion with Daniel Miller

Daniel Miller is Professor of Material Culture at University College London. Miller’s foundational work in consumption studies, material culture studies and the anthropology of materiality has made profound contributions to our understanding of consumption, markets and culture. He is particularly known for Material Culture and Mass Consumption (1987), A Theory of Shopping (1998) and his edited collections Unwrapping Christmas (1995), the four‐volume Consumption: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences (2001), and Materiality (2005). He is a tremendously prolific scholar and has worked with a large number of doctoral students. His 2008 book, The Comfort of Things, has introduced Miller to a wider audience. This interview took place in London on 25 November 2008.

Is there a cannibal in organization studies? Notes on anthropophagy and organization (Recipe included)

This article draws out cannibals and cannibalism to elaborate issues of boundaries and consumption in theorizing organization. The logic(s) of cannibalism highlight some of organization’s inherent tensions, stimulating our understanding via the manifold movements of the cannibal. In a moment of reflection—the negotiation of who should and who should not be consumed—the cannibal appears, a figure at the precise point of passage between the organized and primordial chaos, chronologically hybrid, an affecting shadow in a melancholy economy.

Managing Desire: Heretical Transformation in Pasolini's Medea

In this essay, I theorize desires role in the construction of heretical subjectivity through an exploration of Italian poet, theorist, and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolinis cinematic interpretation of Medea . Pasolinis film and sound techniques, in conjunction with his ideological agenda, move Medeas tragic narrative beyond the accusatory tone of familiar tropes into a theoretical tale of semoiticized social structures and the flow of human capita. What Pasolini provides is less a strategy for managing heretical desire and more an attitude of action and waiting, of silence and communication, but always in the wake of desire.

Critical Visual Analysis of Gender: Reactions and Reflections

Abstract As a way to think about gender in marketing, this article reflects on recent events of the ‘Gamergate’ scandal, in which an online analyst of gender in video games was severely harassed and threatened. We focus largely of representational conventions of gender, and introduce conceptual tools such as ethics of representation and performative iteration to illuminate key concerns within marketing representation. We raise several important issues for future work on gender and marketing, and urge a move beyond a search for ‘effects’.

From Chinese Brand Culture to Global Brands

Chinese-styled branding, conceived as a process that generates cultural meaning and value, can be productively considered in a conceptual space located between managerial strategy and consumer interpretation, with implications for brand management and research. Creating a frame for this space directs attention to a perceived gap between managerial intention and market response. We suggest that the potential of Chinese branding can be elaborated through the notions of co-creation and circulation between brands and cultures.

Marketing, Bad Faith, and Responsibility

This chapter deepens the sense of marketing’s potential realm of influence, and thus broadens the territory for ethical issues in marketing. Marketing activities go beyond simplistic notions of promotion, persuasion, or selling ‘stuff’. From prenatal testing and political candidates to personal ads, little remains untouched by marketing. Indeed, researchers and practitioners in the field of marketing seek to understand, but also cocreate, modes of knowing and being. For example, how we come to think about travel destinations, and moreover what we think about the identities of the people who live there, may be largely the result of marketing communications, whether popular travel websites, television specials, or the latest beer and wine promotions.

Forms of inconspicuous consumption: What drives inconspicuous luxury consumption in China?

Inconspicuous consumption – whereby brand signals are subtle, or not easily visible, to most consumers and the overt display of social status is sidestepped – is on the rise, even in China, which has typically favoured conspicuous brand signalling. Research on luxury brands tends to focus on conspicuous consumption, and few studies have explored the ways in which Chinese consumers use Chinese luxury brands in inconspicuous ways. This study examines how Chinese luxury consumers are redefining their identity projects, as well as their conceptions of luxury, in relation to inconspicuous consumption. We suggest that inconspicuous consumption encompasses consuming luxury products without overtly displaying wealth and social status. Thus, certain luxury brands enable inconspicuous consumption. Turning to a group of Chinese luxury brands offers insights into how luxury brands may fill this role for newly emerging forms of inconspicuous consumption. We distinguish four forms of inconspicuous consumption, illustrated by consumers (1) with wished-for identities or fantasy lifestyles, (2) who appreciate aesthetics and function, (3) who are wealthy and prefer not to provoke envy and/or anger in times of economic austerity and (4) who desire to differentiate themselves and employ subtle signals that are only observable to people with the requisite knowledge to decode their meaning. These forms of inconspicuous consumption facilitate the construction and display of one’s reflective identities, including privately fantasized identity, privately held identity and partially public reflective identities. Thus, we contribute to identity construction theory by explicating aspects of reflective identity and linking them to forms of inconspicuous consumption. Finally, we expand upon recent research on inconspicuous consumption by demonstrating how inconspicuous consumption is manifested in China – the largest luxury market. The results help redefine constructs in the paradoxical situation of inconspicuous consumption of luxury brands, adding a layer of complexity to the inconspicuous consumption concept.