The bookstore war on Orchard Road: a study of contemporary sponsors of literacy and ideologies of globalized book retailing in Singapore

Based on a year's worth of fieldwork in Singapore, this article is a case study of the much-publicized ‘bookstore war on Orchard Road’ that pitted Borders' American ‘loosey-goosey’ model of bookselling against Kinokuniya's ‘serious’ Japanese model. It examines the distinctive role that country-of-origin effects play in the cultural practices and perceptions of these two global sponsors of literacy, which have in recent decades rivaled traditional sponsors of literacy such as libraries in guiding individuals on ‘what, when and how’ to read. An analysis of the Orchard Road bookstore war captures some of the competing ideologies of textual practices circulating in Singapore as cosmopolitan print consumers and their professional counterparts express their acceptance and/or rejection of particular bookselling practices. For the professionals, good bookselling involves the promotion of local print cultures. In contrast, the cosmopolitan consumers seldom mentioned this criterion. In fact, many of them were drawn to the ‘globality’ of transnational booksellers. While print professionals clearly favored Kinokuniya's globalization localization practices over Borders, a clear-cut preference did not emerge among cosmopolitan consumers. This study suggests that country-of-origin effects likely informed the way in which print professionals and cosmopolitan consumers perceived Borders and Kinokuniya and the globalization localization strategies of these global sponsors of literacy.     

购买成功:炫耀性消费广告制造的认同秘密

广告制造的认同可以分为三个层次,其代表性形式为炫耀性消费广告,这种广告制造的认同秘密在于促使消费者购买成功,由此导致了理论、实践的内部冲突以及理论与实践之间的矛盾。本文认为,这种矛盾是由于发展中的认同理论难以有效解决个体认同和集体认同之间的内部差异所导致的。     

Maintaining and Sharing a Haudenosaunee Identity: Onondaga Collective Memory and Social Media

In this article, I survey the Onondaga Nation's social media outlets in the light of collective memory theory. The article identifies several core topics of the nation's identity narratives which, all together, are perceived as an expression of Onondaga functional memory. The role of wampum belts as medial cues to that memory is highlighted as well as the role of social media in the struggle against the negative effects of native media invisibility.     

Sacrifice,Consumption, and the American Way of Life: Advertising and Domestic Propaganda during World War II

This paper explores the themes of sacrifice and consumption in World War II advertising, including content analyses of advertisements and editorials in the Saturday Evening Post as well as a textual analysis of articles in the advertising trade publications Printer’s Ink and Industrial Marketing in 1942 and 1943. Results are discussed in terms of Cohen’s (2003) concepts of “citizen consumer,” “purchaser consumer,” and the ultimate American postwar dual-identity: “purchaser as citizen.”     

Reducing Native Advertising Deception: Revisiting the Antecedents and Consequences of Persuasion Knowledge in Digital News Contexts

Building on the persuasion knowledge model, this study examines how audience characteristics and native advertising recognition influence the covert persuasion process. Among a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 738), we examined digital news readers’ recognition of a sponsored news article as advertising. Although fewer than 1 in 10 readers recognized the article as advertising, recognition was most likely among younger, more educated consumers who engaged with news media for informational purposes. Recognition led to greater counterarguing, and higher levels of informational motivation also led to less favorable evaluations of the content among recognizers. News consumers were most receptive to native advertising in a digital news context when publishers were more transparent about its commercial nature. Beyond theoretical insights into the covert persuasion process, this study offers practical utility to the advertisers, publishers, and policymakers who wish to better understand who is more likely to be confused by this type of advertising so that they can take steps to minimize deception.     

Influence of TV endorser types on advertising attitudes and purchase intention among Indian rural women: an exploratory study

India has a growing rural consumer base that has been largely ignored by advertisers. Today, Indian rural consumers, especially women, are increasingly literate, brand savvy, and possess rising disposable incomes. Considering the nation's love for films and the availability of television broadcasting, celebrity endorsement has become one of the most popular strategies used by advertisers in India. However, its impact on rural consumers has yet to be tested. Using self-categorization as the theoretical framework, the current study examined the influence of endorser types (national celebrity, regional celebrity, and noncelebrity) on advertising attitudes and purchase intention of Indian rural women. In addition, the authors also analyzed the impact of the three dimensions of source credibility. A sample of rural women (N = 167) from the Kudumbashree mission, one of the largest woman empowerment projects in the country, was recruited for the experiment. Findings showed that noncelebrity endorsers were most effective and that trustworthiness was valued more than expertise and attractiveness. Implications for advertisers are discussed.     

大数据精准广告的伦理问题和路径分析——基于消费者感知的实证研究

在大数据时代,网购越来越成为人们生活中的一部分,网购中出现的精准广告在给消费者提供便利的同时,也存在着许多伦理问题。本研究通过问卷调查,发现消费者对精准广告中的伦理问题具有较高认知度、低敏感度和较高认可度,总体感知较高,并通过深度访问进一步得出消费者会从安全(Safety)、自愿(Voluntary)、诚信(Integrity)、有益(Beneficial)、多样(Diversity)五个维度进行精准广告伦理感知,并建立消费者伦理感知SVIBD模型。为保护消费者隐私以及解决精准广告的伦理问题,在国家法律、行业自律和消费者三个角度对精准广告的未来发展提出建设性意见。     

Voters' Attention,Perceived Effects,and Voting Preferences: Negative Political Advertising in the 2006 Ohio Governor's Election

A statewide survey (N = 564) before Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial election examined political interest, campaign news and advertising attention, and perceived effects of negative political ads. Interest was related to political and negative political advertising attention, which were in turn related to campaign news attention. Candidate preference predicted attention to political and negative political ads; attention to ads significantly predicted perceived effects on self and on others, whereas attention to negative ads significantly predicted third-person differential (other minus self). In addition, individuals polled in this survey admitted that attention to ads and negative ads was having comparable effects on both themselves and others. This finding may be due to the climate surrounding Ohio's gubernatorial race, which instilled a political importance and social desirability that abated the need to disown an effect of negative advertising on oneself.     

Celebrity Athletes,Soft Power and National Identity: Hong Kong Newspaper Coverage of the Olympic Champions of Beijing 2008 and London 2012

The modern Olympic Games have been regarded as vehicles for governments to use elite athletes to promote soft power agendas and build national cohesion. Adopting textual analysis, the present study examined the global sports events within a specific sociocultural context, by analyzing and comparing the reportage of 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics in four Hong Kong newspapers. All the news articles were probed to discern pervading themes regarding the Olympic champions as celebrities, and three discursive formations were identified: national heroes, rags-to-riches figures, and stars in the entertainment industry. The findings make visible both the instances that nurture the perception of national identity and Hong Kong media's alternative responses to the party-state's propaganda. Although the Olympics can play a positive role in articulating national pride and fostering national identity, the study also shows the complexities of the construction of Chinese nationalism and patriotism in postcolonial Hong Kong.     

Information source and advertising content preferences of American and Japanese youth

This study compared American and Japanese youth preferences for information sources and advertising content within the context of their respective cultures’ relationship and communication values. It found larger parental involvement and smaller media use for Japanese students. In an interesting reversal from cultural expectations, Japanese students ranked advertising as the most important information source and family as considerably less important, while American students did the opposite. Friends, not family, were the important interpersonal information source for the Japanese. Japanese consumers of the ‘90s may be ‘holonic’: able to be both individualistic and in harmony with groups important to them. The Japanese youth preferences for advertising content—indirect, symbolic, visual, emotional, with infrequent brand identification—were more in line with expectations.     

Internationalization of the women's magazine industry in Taiwan context,process and influence

This paper looks at the impact of internationalization on the women's magazine industry in Taiwan. It addresses the growing concentration of ownership and control at the international level, how the subsequent standardization has affected advertising, and the implications this has had for the magazines’ readership.

The influx of international magazines to the Taiwanese market since the mid 1980s saw a marked shift of advertising toward transnational brand products. With this in mind, content analysis was conducted to compare advertising in local magazines with that of locally available editions of international titles. The domestic titles, New Woman and Nong‐nong and the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire were analysed for 1995. The results indicate that commercial forces have resulted in Taiwan's women's magazines presenting the international stereotype of women in aesthetic roles.     

Identity on Social Networks as a Cue: Identity,Retweets, and Credibility

The current study investigates how social media affordances influence individuals’ source credibility perceptions in the presence of risk information, specifically examining how bandwagon heuristics interact with different identity heuristics at the individual level. The MAIN model and warranting theory serve as the theoretical framework to examine the effects of bandwagon cues and identity cues embedded in retweets and users’ profile pages for health and risk online information processing. A posttest-only experiment with a self-report questionnaire was administered to participants. Results indicate that different online heuristic cues impact the judgments of competence, goodwill, and trustworthiness. Authority cues strongly influenced source credibility perceptions. A reverse-bandwagon effect was observed in influencing source credibility judgments.     

Cultural influences on consumers' processing of advertising: A structural equation approach

This study reports a structural equation approach to the cultural differences in consumers' processing of advertising. The study hypothesized a path model for advertising processing and tested it for three different groups: Koreans, Korean‐Americans, and Caucasian‐Americans. The findings revealed that the final path patterns were different according to consumers' cultural background. Even though the influences of ad content were significant across the three different groups, prior attitudes to the brand played a more important role in Koreans' advertising processing than in Caucasian‐Americans' processing. The impact of each demographic variable also varied according to culture. The results were discussed through Hofstede's four cultural dimensions and Hall's dichotomy of high‐context versus low‐context culture.     

Visual Assertions: Effects of Photo Manipulation and Dual Processing for Food Advertisements

In our media landscape, consumers view a plethora of messages with visual assertions, created through postproduction photo manipulation, which communicate meaning at-a-glance. These visual assertions are processed initially and directly and greatly influence how consumers think, feel, and behave. Yet the impact of visuals, which likely color all processing, is not incorporated in persuasive message processing models. Using dual processing models from multiple disciplines as a theoretical foundation, this study demonstrates through two experiments that the effects of photo manipulation, as visual assertions, in food advertising increased consumers' perceptions of healthfulness, positive attitudes, and purchase intentions. Dual processing models for persuasive messages should be extended to account for the initial, influential visual processing of implied assertions, often manipulated during postproduction.     

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.     

Form and variations in negative political advertising

Using a sample of 99 political advertisements from 1990 statewide and federal elections, a content analysis was employed to test whether negative political advertisements exhibited a normative style. Results indicated that negative political advertisements were remarkably similar in substance and style, indicating a normative advertising form. The authors suggest that negative advertisements are used more to “blunt” an opponent's chance of winning the election than to promote the sponsoring candidate's own images or characteristics with their constituency.     

Political advertising in Taiwan and the US: Across‐cultural comparison of the 1996 presidential election campaigns

This study applies Hall's (1977) culture‐context theory and Hofstede's (1991) individualistic/collectivistic aspects of cultural differences to understand how content and appeals of political advertising in Taiwan and the US differ. The aspects examined included the presence of direct and indirect attacks, the presentation of issues, types of settings, and the use of metaphors, symbols, and songs. Analyses showed that most of the findings were consistent with cultural expectations.     

Food and Beverage Advertising on U.S. Television: A Comparison of Child-Targeted Versus General Audience Commercials

Major advertisers and children's television networks have announced marketing policies designed to combat childhood obesity. A content analysis of food advertising was conducted on programming from broadcast and cable networks most likely to be viewed by children. Unlike previous content analyses, the results show that nutrition appeals are among the most frequently used. However, as in past research, unhealthy foods are most frequently advertised. Further, child-targeted commercials employ production techniques and persuasive appeals that children have found difficult to evaluate critically. The potential impacts of this advertising landscape are discussed on both the individual and social level.     

On the Deceptive Effectiveness of Labeled and Unlabeled Advertorial Formats

This experiment investigates the effects of an advertorial message on 4 dimensions of reader involvement. The use of the advertorial format was found to have increased participants' perceived message relevance, attention to written message, message elaboration, and message recall over the use of a standard advertisement format. Responses to labeled and unlabeled versions of the same advertorial did not vary significantly. Although participants perceived both labeled and unlabeled advertorials to be advertisements, rather than editorial material, more than two thirds of the participants who were exposed to a labeled advertorial failed to recall the presence of the label. Our findings indicate that the advertorial format fools readers into greater involvement with the advertising message and that the presence of advertorial labels may not be particularly effective in alerting consumers to the true nature of the message.