Julien Cayla

Asian Brands and the Shaping of a Transnational Imagined Community

We investigate how brand managers create regional Asian brands and show how some of them are attempting to forge new webs of interconnectedness through the construction of a transnational, imagined Asian world. Some branding managers are creating regional brands that emphasize the common experience of globalization, evoke a generic, hyper-urban, and multicultural experience, and are infused with diverse cultural referents. These types of regional Asian brands contribute to the creation of an imagined Asia as urban, modern, and multicultural. Understanding this process helps one to appreciate the role of branding managers in constructing markets and places. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

A Cultural Approach to Branding in the Global Marketplace

International marketings commitment to a technical and universalizing approach to solving managerial problems has meant that researchers have adopted an ethnocentric approach to branding. This is becoming problematic as the global marketplace develops. The authors argue that to meet the theoretical and methodological challenges of global branding, international marketing scholars will need to revise some key premises and foundations. Branding research in the future will need to be contextually and historically grounded, polycentric in orientation, and acutely attuned to the symbolic significance of brands of all types. The authors offer some conceptual foundations for a culturally relative, contextually sensitive approach to international branding in which the construct of brand mythology is central.

Asian brands without borders: regional opportunities and challenges

Purpose – This study aims to analyze Asian branding strategies at the regional level, and provide a map of opportunities and challenges for Asian regional branding.Design/methodology/approach – The study takes, a multi‐sited interpretive approach and interview 22 brand managers throughout the Asian region. The length of interviews was approximately 1.5 hours/respondent. In‐depth case studies of two prominent pan‐Asian brands, Tiger Beer and Zuji, were also conducted. An interpretive analysis to this data set was applied and five themes were developed.Findings – The two major challenges for regional Asian branding are negative country of origin perceptions and regional positioning being inherently fragile. Despite these key challenges, our respondents saw clear opportunities for regional branding initiatives. Brands can achieve a regional positioning by focusing on Asian modernity rather than on common cultural heritage. They can also capitalize on newfound Asian pride and confidence, and finally they can ...

Ethnographic Stories for Market Learning.

Although ethnography has become a popular research approach in many organizations, major gaps exist in the fields understanding of the way it operates in the corporate world, particularly in how ethnography facilitates market learning. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography, the authors describe how ethnographic stories give executives a unique means of understanding market realities. By working through the rich details of ethnographic stories infused with the tensions, contradictions, and emotions of peoples everyday lives, executives are better able to grasp the complexity of consumer cultures. Overall, this research should help managers leverage the catalytic effects of ethnographic storytelling in their efforts to learn about and understand market contexts.

Mapping the Play of Organizational Identity in Foreign Market Adaptation.

While organizational identity can be a powerful tool for mobilizing and directing organizational members, the authors’ findings demonstrate that it can also constrain the process of foreign market adaptation. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in India, where they followed several multinational companies, they show how well-entrenched and enduring identities can obstruct the learning and strategic adjustments that are necessary to appeal to consumers in a new market environment. By explaining how organizational identity comes into play as a frame of reference and guiding principle, orienting managers in their efforts to preserve the character of their firm as it expands and globalizes, this research offers new insights into foreign market learning and adaptation. The authors extend this analysis to provide valuable recommendations to managers for making organizational identity a more explicit component of global marketing strategy.

Indian Consumer Kaun Hai? The Class-Based Grammar of Indian Advertising

Advertising proves to be a particularly useful source of images, stories, and vocabulary, to study the globalization of the Indian economy and the construction of Indian identity. The authors analyze how advertising executives and other cultural producers, such as magazine editors, try to answer the question “Indian consumer kaun hai?” (Who is the Indian consumer?) while trying to develop narratives that can represent Indian ways of living. In a country as diverse as India, this is an extremely difficult task. Drawing from a content analysis of the Hindi and English versions of India Today as well as interviews with Indian advertising executives, the authors detail how cultural producers imagine Indian consumers. This work illuminates the striking differences, between the imagined cultural world of the English speaking elite, and their vernacular counterparts. By showing the importance of the English language, and Western cultural references in indexing the “modern Indian,” this work contributes to macromarketing efforts to study globalization and its effects.

Brand mascots as organisational totems

Abstract Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in an Indian advertising agency, this paper demonstrates that brand mascots are more than advertising glitter designed to cajole consumers. When they become the basis for the collective rallying of organisational members who converge around a tangible manifestation of their firms unique character, brand mascots operate as organisational totems, helping concretise and reproduce an organisations identity in a foreign context.

Consumer Fetish: Commercial Ethnography and the Sovereign Consumer

What is the sovereign consumer that occupies such a central role in organizational discourse whose satisfaction has become an organizational imperative? Our research draws from extended fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography. Our analysis shows how ethnography is implicated in the organizational fetishization of consumers, that is, how in the process of understanding and managing markets, a quasi-magical fascination with amalgams of consumer voices, images, and artefacts comes about. We offer several contributions. First, we demonstrate the pertinence of (primarily anthropological) theories of the fetish to organizational sensemaking. Second, we describe a distinctive process of organizational market sensemaking that is sensuous, magical, and analogical. Third, we offer a subtle critique of commercial ethnography, a popular research practice that aims to bring ‘real’ consumers to life inside the firm.

Party time: recreation rituals in the world of B2B

Abstract We examine the role of business parties in business markets: why do B2B companies spend such large amounts of money to sponsor events meant for public consumption, such as sporting events, when most of their activity involves selling to other organisations? Drawing from extensive qualitative fieldwork in the world of tennis tournaments, we detail the specific universe of parties that happen backstage, between companies sponsoring these events. This context helps illuminate the critical role of business parties in business networks. Far from being mere recreation at the company’s expense, business parties are important opportunities for executives to develop and manage their relationships. We show that a business party functions as a particular kind of ritual by creating a distinct universe with its own language, gestures, and other modes of interaction. Summary statement of contribution Our theoretical contribution to the literature on relationship marketing is to detail the unifying function of business parties in local business markets, where relationships with a variety of organisations are key to a company’s success. Our methodological contribution is to illustrate the relevance of anthropological approaches and concepts, such as rituals, to the world of B2B.

Fetish, magic, marketing

Contrary to rationalist assumptions about contemporary economic life, magical thoughts and actions pervade organizations. We examine two different organizational worlds—market research and luxury marketing—and show that in both domains, magical practices are ubiquitous. Our research features marketing executives fetishizing the figure of the consumer and endowing consumer images and talk with magical powers. In addition, we describe creative directors from the luxury world who behave similar to traditional sorcerers: playing with their magical powers to transform ordinary objects into works of art. Across these distinct organizational contexts, we demonstrate that modern organizations are far from being well-oiled rationalist machines, or, if they are, the oil that makes business churn is the power of magic.