The bases of successful market entry: The liability of size and of newness in E‐commerce

Abstract

Even though e‐commerce almost disappeared from public discussion, it still assumes a vital role in the strategic management of most enterprises. New entry in e‐commerce, whether as a new business segment of an established company or as a new enterprise, is likely to deal with the liabilities of size and newness. The aim of this paper it to discuss if those factors have an impact on the implementation and success of B2C e‐commerce. We chose the online book market as our reference market and drew a random sample of retailers and publishers with an online shop. The quality of the web presence, indirect success (number of links to a particular site) and direct success (turnover of the web shop) were compared in subsamples constructed by the use of median splits according to age and size. Younger companies and larger companies were found to have a web presence of higher quality and were more successful than older or smaller companies. We conclude that the liabilities of newness do not seem to have an adverse performance impact in e‐commerce. However, when a market entry is considered, new players must ensure that they can commit enough resources to build a high quality web presence.     

“The Rising Tide of War”: Cambodian Bombings and the Discourses of American Military Power in Time

During the Vietnam War, American planes dropped more bombs on Cambodia than had fallen in all of Europe during World War II. The event marks a key moment in the secretive expansion of U.S. military power, and this article looks at how mainstream journalism helped create the discursive conditions that abetted this expansion. After an explication of the historical and theoretical rationales for studying the relation between journalism and U.S. military power, this article analyzes Time magazine's coverage of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973 and finds that the American press at the time was not discursively configured to critique the U.S. military-diplomatic apparatus. The article analyzes the depiction of Cambodia as a theater of war and argues that most critiques of the bombing were limited to President Richard Nixon's quality of character, providing a locus that prevented more systemic critiques from emerging.     

Sonic Sturdiness: The Globalization of “Chinese” Rock and Pop

To theorize further global and regional flows of popular culture, this article provides a critical analysis of “authentic” rock music from Beijing as well as “commercial” pop from Hong Kong. Following Appadurai, I theorize rock as a hard cultural form, which, under the scrutinizing eyes of the West, demands localization when it travels to places outside its perceived homeland, the West. By comparing hardcore punk from Beijing to Cantopop, I discuss whether the soft relates to the hard as pop does to rock. I conclude it does not. The transient, intertextual, and multivocal opaque voice of pop demands a different theorization. I therefore recast Appadurai's hard–soft distinction into a clear–opaque dualism as a more accurate theoretical tool for understanding cultural globalization.     

“Authentic” talk in broadcast news: The construction of community

Some recent assessments of public communication have demonstrated a concern for “authentic” forms of discourse in public life. This article uses a methodology derived from conversation analysis to examine different forms of public discourse in news interviews. Previous studies taking this approach have outlined the protocols for formal news interviews, but this article also looks at some types of “conversational” news interviewing that are increasingly prevalent in contemporary broadcasting. The modes of address (to the overhearing audience) in these types of interview can be usefully compared to the inclusive, sociable address associated with some genres of popular entertainment. It is suggested that the effect of “communality,” constructed by these conversational forms of talk, might be one factor in the development of new forms of participatory “public‐ness,” around some types of news events.     

Manufacturing Authenticity: The Rhetoric of “Real” in Women's Magazines

Discourses of authenticity are symptomatic of an era of destabilized communication hierarchies, participatory media, and reality television programming. Women's magazines are an apt site to examine articulations of authenticity given the genre's traditional emphases on aspirational consumption and “making up” the external self. This study explores constructions of authenticity in the advertising and editorial content of two top-ranked publications, Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Drawing on a qualitative textual analysis of these magazines, the author conceptualizes three overlapping tropes of authenticity: (a) promoting natural, organic products; (b) the celebration of ordinary-looking women; and (c) the encouragement of inner-directed self-discovery. These striations of real products, real external beauty, and real internal beauty, respectively, allow authenticity to seep throughout the texts without fundamentally disrupting their traditional commercial function.     

Bookselling—book buying: The European perspective of the online market

The book market in European countries is different than the U.S. market for various political, geographical, and cultural reasons. The authors outline these differences and provide background on the move to electronic commerce and future. The article includes many electronic and print sources of and bibliographic tools for locating books in the European market.     

The Attractiveness of Magazines as “Open” and “Closed” Texts: Values of Women's Magazines and Their Readers

This study examines the widespread notion that people turn to media to find reinforcement for their personal values. Based on a representative sample of subscribers to women's magazines, the article investigates relationships between readers’ own values and the values they ascribe to the magazine. For some titles, selective exposure to a periodical that presents values close to their readers is observed. For others, readers disagree on magazine values to an extent that indicates considerable room for interpretation of a magazine as an “open” text. Some women's magazines seem to allow their readers to project their own values onto the published contents rather than presenting a clear-cut, “objective” value pattern that could steer exposure.     

The Establishment of “Rural Bookrooms” in China

In July 2006, the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People’s Public of China hosted a forum entitled “The Support by the National Press and Publishing Industry and the Construction of a New Socialist Country”. Since then, the construction work of Rural Bookrooms has been carried out and thousands of the “Benefit-for-Peasant Libraries”, “Rural Bookrooms” and “New Countryside Libraries”, etc., has been built up in different parts of rural areas and in peasants’ residential sites in urban areas to meet the demand of a large number of the farmers for reading and improve their scientific and cultural quality. Up to now, the building of Rural Bookrooms has become one main part of the cultural construction in China on a countrywide basis. It will be historically significant in improving the peasants’ scientific and cultural development, narrowing the gap between rural and urban areas, maintaining the peasants’ basis right of cultural learning and promoting the modernization of China as a country.     

Race in “The Race”: Mark McGwire,Sammy Sosa,and Heroic Constructions of Whiteness

News media in the United States often present sports figures as ideal representations of heroism. In the U.S., heroism has long been linked to frontier mythology, which celebrates the rugged individualist. This figure privileges a construction of heroism based on strength, masculinity, and a white ideal associated with American exceptionalism. Accordingly, in affirming the promise of the American dream, sports media often devalue racial inclusion. To show how heroism in contemporary American culture is a mythological enactment of whiteness, I analyze news media accounts of the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.     

Managing E-book Acquisition: The Coordination of “P” and “E” Publication Dates

For many research libraries, the book acquisition process has grown increasingly complicated and unwieldy as libraries seek both print and electronic formats, practice both patron-driven and library-selected purchasing, and must accommodate a wide range of patron and disciplinary preferences in setting these priorities. In this presentation, Gabrielle Wiersma of the University of Colorado Boulder and Sarah Forzetting of Coutts Information Services describe an integrated approval plan system that manages all book acquisition processes to reduce inefficiency and streamline librarian workflows.     

“The total woman:”; The rhetoric of completion

The success of Marabel Morgan's Total Woman indicate its rhetorical effectiveness despite its substantive flaws. This article argues that the book's strong appeal to readers stems from: (1) its promise of fulfillment if woman expiate the guilt they bear for marital discord by self sacrifice; (2) its reinforcement of readers perceptions of themselves and their husbands; and (3) its emphasis on the power of “Total Women”; and its encouragement of sexual fantasy and play. These strategies produce a persuasive message which plays on readers’ concerns for their marriages, offers an alternative to the self consciousness urged by feminists and permits women to fulfill comfortable stereotypes yet experience the power and sexual freedom promised by liberationists. For readers with troubled marriages Morgan provides an alluringly simple, emotionally attractive answer to complex questions. Her message is rhetorically effective even if intellectually weak and psychologically misleading.     

Plain journalism: The maintenance of a “vocabulary of kinship” in an Amish newspaper

Media may serve as avenues for the expression of common ideals and values that help individuals place themselves in a community of like-minded people. Using Benedict Anderson’s notion of a mediated “vocabulary of kinship” that binds individuals together, this study illustrates the ways the very structure of media content can encourage feelings of commonality. The vehicle for this inquiry is The Budget, a weekly newspaper produced by and for a North American audience of Amish and Mennonite readers. The research suggests that structural aspects of dispatches in The Budget, such as conversational and intentionally informal writing styles, the encouragement of dialog, and use of particular dialects and phrases, reinforce values of familiarity and intimacy that are central to Amish and Mennonite culture.     

Consumer Use and Business Potential of Virtual Worlds: The Case of “Second Life”

Abstract

Several months ago, the virtual social world “Second Life” (SL) received considerable interest in both the popular and business press. Based on a series of 29 qualitative, in-depth interviews, this article investigates what types of behaviors consumers show within this environment and what business opportunities it offers for companies. The results indicate that users do not consider SL as a mere computer game but as an extension of their real lives. This has implications for how marketing managers can use this online application that go beyond those known from traditional computer or online games.     

“The Paradox of Narcissus and Echo in the Instagram Pond” in Light of the Selfie Culture from Freudian Evolutionary Psychology: Self-Loving and Confident but Lonely

Drawing from the Freudian evolutionary psychology of narcissism and the literature on social media popularity, this article addresses the central theme revolving around “The Paradox of Digital Narcissists in the Instagram Pond” in light of the selfie/groupie culture. A cross sectional survey was conducted among 398 Instagram users (236 males and 162 females) recruited from Amazon M-Turk. Structural equation modeling analyses using Mplus 7.4 propose an integrative model of narcissism and reveal dynamic relationships among users’ narcissism, self-discrepancy, self-confidence, intrasexual competition for mates, need to belong, need for popularity, loneliness, number of selfie/groupie posts on Instagram, and number of Instagram followers/followings.     

Soft-Core in TV Time: The Political Economy of a “Cultural Trend”

This essay deconstructs popular notions that “sex sells” in an increasingly sexualized U.S. popular culture by examining the specific political, social, and economic forces behind the creation and expansion of Girls Gone Wild, a home video series marketed through television infomercials. The crackdown on hard-core pornography, followed by the opening of television infomercial markets, paved the way for the series’ creator to bring together the structural organization of a new soft-core video industry with the marketing aims of a cable industry eager to sell young, male ratings.