Article Abstract:
This article examines text and consumer responses from the perspective of post-modern feminist literary criticism. It uses a feminist framework to incorporate the issues of advertising as gendered text and consumer responses as gendered readings into consumer research. The article begins with a brief background discussion of feminist literary theory to introduce the concept of gendered text and to set forth the "reading " methodology developed to identigy it. Next, this method is demonstrated in a feminist reading of two advertising figures - the Marlboro Man and the Dakota Woman. Then, the article presents a feminist perspective on gendered reading - different male and female reading styles relevant to consumers and ads. Last, ideas about gendered texts and readers are integrated into ongoing consumer research on attitude toward the ad, inferencing, and empathy. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
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Article Abstract:
This article proposes literary criticism as a source of insight into consumer behavior, presents a broad overview of literary criticism, provides a specific illustrative analysis, and offers suggestions for further research. Literary analysis of advertising text reveals elements that provide additional information to consumer researchers, and contributions of literary criticism to consumer research are discussed. Major post-war critical schools are reviewed, and relevant theoretical concepts summarized. An ad for Ivory Flakes is analyzed using a variety of concepts drawn from literary schools, primarily sociocultural and reader-response ones. Suggestions for additional research on content analysis, image analysis, and the history of consumption are made. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
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Article Abstract:
This article introduces the application of deconstruction to consumer research by addressing three questions: What is it? How does one do it? and What contribution can it make? It briefly summarizes deconstruction's French origins and entry in American criticism and examines the key term differance - "difference" and "deference." The article demonstrates the role of deconstructive criticism as an agent provocateur by first presenting interpretations of an advertising exemplar - Joe Camel - from the perspectives of the New Criticism and structuralism and then performing a deconstructive reading that subverts these interpretations. It ends with the implications of deconstruction for enlivening consumer research discourse. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
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