Sidney J. Levy

Broadening the concept of marketing.

Marketing in business is the task of finding and stimulating buyers for a firmss output. Product development, pricing, distribution, and communication are the mainstays of marketing, while progressive firms also develop new products and chart the trends and changes in peoples needs and desires. Marketing can either apply its knowledge to social problems and organizations or remain in a narrowly defined business activity. Every organization has basically the same functions: personnel management, production, income, and promotion, which are using modern marketing skills in commercial sectors. Suppliers and consumers are needed by all organizations. In Canada a group wished to promote an antismoking campaign but they had little money compared to the tobacco companies. This group used modern marketing techniques to combat their lack of funds and found many ways, e.g., books, articles. A business firm uses a multitude of marketing tools to sell its product. Nonbusiness organizations frequently do not integrate their programs the way the businesses place all activities under one marketing vice president and department. Astute marketing depends on continuous feedback from consumers and suppliers. They are dependent upon up-to-the-minute research that tells them about changes in the environment and moves of competitors. Nonbusiness organizations are often casual about the research upon which they base their vital decisions.

Stalking the Amphisbaena

AMPHISBAENA: A fabulous animal, keeper of the “Great Secret,” according to. a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript that belonged to Count Pierre V. Piobb. -It is a symbol that occurs with some frequency in heraldic images, marks, and signs. It was known to the Greeks, and it owes its name to the belief that, having a head at both ends, it could move forward or backward with equal ease. Sometimes it is depicted with the claws of a bird and the pointed wings of a bat (Piobb 1950). According to Diel (1952), it was probably intended to express the horror and anguish associated with ambivalent situations. Like all fabulous animals, it instances the ability of the human mind to reorder aspects of the real world, according to supralogical laws, blending them into patterns expressive of mans motivating psychic forces (Cirlot 1962).

A history of the concept of branding: practice and theory

Purpose – This inquiry aims to contribute to the literature on the historical developments that have influenced the origin, uses, and meanings of branding.Design/methodology/approach – In this qualitative work an historical methodology was followed and, according to Howell and Preveniers guidelines, a wide variety of sources were selected of the data presented. Moreover, this study draws on three important perspectives – that of the practitioner, the scholar, and the consumer – in order to offer a thorough view of the relevant issues concerning the evolution of branding.Findings – The investigation suggests that various forces (e.g., the media, economic developments during the Second World War, marketing research and theorizing) have enacted a comprehensive transformation in the concept of branding. First, the paper offers evidence of the link between fire/burning and the origin of branding. Second, it shows that, in its early days, branding was characterized as a phenomenon with limited applicability. T...

Giving voice to the gift: The use of projective techniques to recover lost meanings

The field of consumer–object relations has recently emerged as a significant area of inquiry. Renewed attention has been devoted to understanding the meanings of gift giving as a result of this emergence. In this study, we employ projective techniques to uncover meanings that are less accessible by more direct measures. We analyze these meanings, and demonstrate the utility of projective techniques as a complement to other methods of investigation.

The evolution of qualitative research in consumer behavior

Abstract This article is my response to an invitation to prepare a “heritage assessment” for presentation to the International Research Seminar at La Londe les Maures in June 1999. Such an assessment is, according to Alain Strazzieri, an authorized view of what is worth remembering from the literature about topics in consumer behavior research. This charge is an open one and I will execute it freely. My presentation of this view has been authorized by the seminars Scientific Committee. Otherwise, you will have to judge my authority on its merits. It does have the weight of my advanced years, giving me the advantage of having started formal study of consumers when research into their behavior was still young. My main themes are the intellectual battling and intellectual cycling that have gone on in our field, especially with reference to the role of qualitative research.

The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences

Volitional reconsumption refers to experiences that consumers actively and consciously seek to experience again. Phenomenological interviews centered on the rereading of books, the rewatching of movies, and the revisiting of geographic places reveal the temporal and focal dimensions of hedonic volitional reconsumption phenomenon and five dominant categories therein. Consumers navigate within and between reconsumption experiences in a hyperresponsive and experientially controlled manner. The dynamics in time and focus fueled by the reconsumed object allow emotional efficiency, as consumers optimize the search for and attainment of the emotional outcomes sought in volitional reconsumption, and facilitate existential understanding, as the linkages across past, present, and future experiences enable an active synthesis of time and promote self-reflexivity. Consumers gain richer and deeper insights into the reconsumption object itself but also an enhanced awareness of their own growth in understanding and appreciation through the lens of the reconsumption object.

Revisiting the marketing domain

The two debates about the domain of marketing and the division between theory and practice are old, recurring and endless. Nevertheless, it is indubitable that marketing pervades society whether or not the critics like the idea of it or the troubling forms it sometimes takes. Similarly, the differences between theoreticians and practitioners are – like parts of a tree – also inevitable as they think differently, have different roles to play, have different languages and feel superior to each other. Those who are blind to these facts create the debates instead of realizing that is the way it is and making the best of it. Reasonable people bridge the gaps by understanding the situation and working cooperatively with their diverse colleagues.

Roots of Marketing and Consumer Research at the University of Chicago1

The marketing and consumer research fields began to flourish in the late 1940s after World War II. Social Research, Inc. was founded in 1946 by members of the University of Chicagos faculty. Students at the Universitys interdisciplinary Committee on Human Development and the Departments of Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology worked at Social Research, Inc., pioneering the application of behavioral methods of research to problems of business and other organizations. This paper traces the transmission of knowledge from the academic setting to the business environment. It notes especially the influence of members of the university faculty and their theories of human behavior on the emerging fields devoted to the study of consumption and culture.

From Marketing Ideology to Branding Ideology

This special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing is concerned with the globalization of marketing ideology. That topic raises the questions of what constitutes a marketing ideology and what might be its status on the global scene. The different approaches adopted in this special issue acknowledge the breadth of the topic and illuminate the intersection of marketing with the basic forces of cultures, politics, religion, conflicts, and a dismal financial debt crisis in the Western nations. To gain perspective, it seems relevant to observe the historical trajectory of marketing ideology and its likely continued path. To this end, we trace marketing ideology from a nineteenth-century premarketing ideology, to its initial focus on production/distribution technology, to its early twentieth-century focus on customer orientation and branding, to its current focus on network conversations and the significance of modern brand ubiquity. Using these insights, we then discuss three perspectives on future development and raise some potentially relevant questions.

Olio and intègraphy as method and the consumption of death

This article discusses strategies called olio and intègraphy as convenient terms for a multi-method approach to studying situations. Encompassing the familiar activities called ethnography, netnography, and symbolic analysis, as well as participant-observation and use of the media, the purpose is to integrate information, data, findings, and examples from a variety of sources in the environment that bear on topics of interest and to explicate what they mean to members of the culture, including the subjects, the researchers, and the audience. This is a classical behavioral science approach that makes explicit the role of the researcher as a participant–observer and an interpreter. It is rooted in symbolic interaction, the classic work of Mead [1934. Mind, Self, and Society, edited by Charles Morris. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press], who noted that “the reflective experience, the world, and things within it exist in the form of situations” (Becker, Howard, Blanche Geer, Everett C. Hughes, and Anselm L. Strauss. 1961. Boys in White. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). In addition to summarizing case examples to illustrate the value of this approach, the “consumption of death” is extensively examined as an under-researched and multi-faceted complexity of circumstances and responses.