Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis


Book Description

This volume addresses some of the most important conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges and opportunities with which the sister disciplines of semiotics and discourse analysis are mutually confronted in the context of considering new avenues of cross-disciplinary application to distinctive branding research streams. In continuation of the collective volume 'Handbook of Brand Semiotics' (Kassel University Press, 2015), which sought to consolidate relevant scholarship and to identify the main territories that have been established at the cross-roads between branding and semiotic research, the current 'Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis' aims at accomplishing further strides in critical areas, such as the exigency for reconsidering the aptness of existing semiotic theories in the face of the radically shifting co-creative landscape of digital branding, the benefits of systematically micro-analyzing brand communities’ discourses by drawing on CAQDAS programs, the combination of big data analytics with discourse theory in corpus analysis, and the epistemological issues that emerge while combining discourse analysis with time-hallowed marketing qualitative and quantitative research methods. At the same time, the volume hosts a resourceful blend of empirical studies and novel conceptual frameworks in burgeoning streams, such as place, heritage, culinary, personal, and political branding.




Handbook of Brand Semiotics


Book Description

Semiotics has been making progressively inroads into marketing research over the past thirty years. Despite the amply demonstrated conceptual appeal and empirical pertinence of semiotic perspectives in various marketing research streams, spanning consumer research, brand communications, branding and consumer cultural studies, there has been a marked deficit in terms of consolidating semiotic brand-related research under a coherent disciplinary umbrella with identifiable boundaries and research agenda. The Handbook of Brand Semiotics furnishes a compass for the perplexed, a set of anchors for the inquisitive and a solid corpus for scholars, while highlighting the conceptual richness and methodological diversity of semiotic perspectives. Written by a team of expert scholars in various semiotics and branding related fields, such as John A. Bateman, David Machin, Xavier Ruiz Collantes, Kay L. O’Halloran, Dario Mangano, George Rossolatos, Merce Oliva, Per Ledin, Gianfranco Marrone, Francesco Mangiapane, Jennie Mazur, Carlos Scolari, Ilaria Ventura, and edited by George Rossolatos, Chief Editor of the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics, the Handbook is intended as a point of reference for researchers who wish to enter the ‘House of Brand Semiotics’ and explore its marvels. The Handbook of Brand Semiotics, actively geared towards an inter-disciplinary dialogue between perspectives from marketing and semiotics, features the state-of-the-art, but also offers directions for future research in key streams, such as: Analyzing and designing brand language across media Brand image, brand symbols, brand icons vs. iconicity The contribution of semiotics to transmedia storytelling Narrativity and rhetorical approaches to branding Semiotic roadmap for designing brand identity Semiotic roadmap for designing logos and packaging Comparative readings of structuralist, Peircean and sociosemiotic approaches to brandcomms Sociosemiotic accounts of building brand identity online Multimodality and Multimodal critical discourse analysis Challenging the omnipotence of cognitivism in brand- related research Semiotics and (inter)cultural branding Brand equity semiotics




Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics


Book Description

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the existing marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, Film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques.




Marketing and Smart Technologies


Book Description

Zusammenfassung: This book includes selected papers presented at the International Conference on Marketing and Technologies (ICMarkTech 2023), held at Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM), Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU), in partnership with University College Prague (UCP), in Prague, Czech Republic, between 30 November and 2 December 2023. It covers up-to-date cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence applied in marketing, virtual and augmented reality in marketing, business intelligence databases and marketing, data mining and big data, marketing data science, web marketing, e-commerce and v-commerce, social media and networking, geomarketing and IoT, marketing automation and inbound marketing, machine learning applied to marketing, customer data management and CRM, and neuromarketing technologies




Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society


Book Description

Doing research is an ever-changing challenge for social scientists. This challenge is harder than ever today as current societies are changing quickly and in many, sometimes conflicting, directions. Social phenomena, personal interactions, and formal and informal relationships are becoming more borderless and disconnected from the anchors of the offline “reality.” These dynamics are heavily marking our time and are suggesting evolutionary challenges in the ways we know, interpret, and analyze the world. Internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is being incorporated into every aspect of daily life, and social life has been deeply penetrated by the internet. This is due to recent technological developments that increase the scope and range of online social spaces and the forms and time of participation such as Web 2.0, which widened the opportunities for user-generated content, the emergence of an “internet of things,” and of ubiquitous mobile devices that make it possible to always be connected. This implies an adjustment to epistemological and methodological stances for conducting social research and an adaption of traditional social research methods to the specificities of online interactions in the digital society. The Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society covers the different strands of methods most affected by the change in a digital society and develops a broader theoretical reflection on the future of social research in its challenge to always be fitting, suitable, adaptable, and pertinent to the society to be studied. The chapters are geared towards unlocking the future frontiers and potential for social research in the digital society. They include theoretical, epistemological, and ontological reflections about the digital research methods as well as innovative methods and tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data. This book is ideal for social scientists, practitioners, librarians, researchers, academicians, and students interested in social research methodology and its developments in the digital scenario.




Destination Management and Marketing: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice


Book Description

The marketing of a destination necessitates strategic planning, decision making, and organization. Effective positioning will result in a strong brand that develops an emotional and productive two-way relationship. Notwithstanding, destination managers should possess relevant knowledge and understanding on traditional and contemporary marketing channels to better engage with prospective visitors. Destination Management and Marketing: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice focuses on utilizing destination branding and content marketing for sustainable growth and competitive advantage within the tourism and hospitality industry, including tools and techniques for travel branding and best practices for better tourism management strategies. Highlighting a range of topics such as service quality, sustainable tourism, and competitiveness model, this publication is an ideal reference source for government officials, travel agencies, advertisers, marketers, tour directors, hotel managers, restaurateurs, industry professionals including those within the hotel, leisure, transportation, and theme park sectors, policymakers, practitioners, academicians, researchers, and students.




Multimodal Communication


Book Description

This book draws on visual data, ranging from advertisements to postage stamps to digital personal photography, to offer a complex interpretation of the different social functions realised by these texts as semiotic artefacts. Framed within the media environment of the city of Hong Kong, the study demonstrates the importance of social context to meaning making and social semiotic multimodal analysis. This book will be of interest to readers in the arts, humanities and social sciences, particularly within the fields of semiotics, visual studies, design studies, media and cultural studies, anthropology and sociology.




Using Semiotics in Marketing


Book Description

In what can seem a complex, abstract field, this book is an invaluably clear, practical resource on how to seize the tremendous opportunity that semiotics offers to better understand your consumers. Semiotics is big business. It is most famous for its unique ability to decode visual images and is the only market research method which provides a systematic, reliable and culturally sensitive method for interpreting what visual images mean. Semiotics sheds new light on consumers and the world they live in, stimulates creativity and innovation, guides brand strategy, and finds solutions to a plethora of marketing problems. Using Semiotics in Marketing will help marketers looking to launch new brands, reposition existing brands, or rejuvenate established ones. Written by one of the original founders of commercial semiotics, Using Semiotics in Marketing outlines precisely what semiotics is and why it matters, before moving on to demonstrate how to run a successful commercial semiotics project. Packed with fascinating case studies proving how visual imagery is interpreted differently across cultural, racial and social demographics, it provides essential insights into understanding consumers. This results in better ads, websites, packaging and social media content - ultimately driving brand growth and profits.







Creating Value


Book Description

In global consumer culture, brands structure an economy of symbolic exchange that gives value to the meanings consumers attach to the brand name, logo, and product category. Brand meaning is not just a value added to the financial value of goods, but has material impact on financial markets themselves. Strong brands leverage consumer investments in the cultural myths, social networks, and ineffable experiences they associate with marketing signs and rituals. Creating Value: The Theory and Practice of Marketing Semiotic Research is a guide to managing these investments by managing the cultural codes that define value in a market or consumer segment. The book extends the discussion beyond the basics of semiotics to post-structural debates related to ethnographic performance, multicultural consumer identity, the digitalized consumer, and heterotopic experiences of consumer space. The book invites readers to challenge the current thinking on topics ranging from cultural branding and brand rhetoric to digital media management and service site design. It also emphasizes the role of product category codes and cultural trends in the production of perceived value. Creating Value explains theory in language that is accessible to academics and students, as well as research practitioners and marketers. By applying semiotics to the everyday world of the marketplace, the book makes sense of the semiotics discipline, which is often mystified by technical jargon and hair-splitting debate in the academic literature. The book also provides practitioners and professors with a practical guide to the methods used in semiotic research across the marketing mix.