Marketing Is the Production of Signs and their Meanings - Essay Example

?Marketing Is All About the Production of Signs and Their Meanings within Contemporary Societies Marketing is indeed concerned with the production ofsigns and their meanings within contemporary societies. In the today’s world, marketing permeates every aspect of daily life. Business organisations use marketing tools to persuade consumers to purchase their goods and services. Non-profit establishments also use marketing to endorse their different causes and to ask for donations. Political organisations are other establishments that employ marketing tools to inspire consumers to choose their favoured candidates. From these examples, it is obvious that in today’s world, marketing is considered as being vital for the success of the objectives of various organisations. Acquiring a marketing mindset is definitely essential in achieving goals. Contemporary society is distinguished by vibrant as well as competitive markets. This is because of the global environment in which modern trade facilitated by the market forces of supply and demand takes place. The characteristics of the capitalist commodity culture have grown to consist of more than the selling or goods. This culture is now an obvious means used for modern communication (Elkington, Hartigan and Schwab, 2008). In the twenty-first century’s commodity culture, corporate logos and advertising images are no longer just a part of the promotional strategies of the producers of consumer goods, but also endorse a particular culture. A lot of people who work in the advertising business perceive advertising as being consistent with the requirements of a democratic economy, contributing towards making customers aware of the existing market options and educating customers about the present product benefits. The Significance of Commodities In a consumer society, products are significant adjuncts to personal relationships as they are symbols that bear social information to others. They function as a 'projective means into which consumers transfer the complicated webs of social as well as personal interactions. Advertising is not merely a business expense that is undertaken with the expectation of bringing transactions, but is instead a basic element of modern culture. Advertising is important due to the fact that in consumer capitalism, customers rely on it for meaning. Advertising is basically a source of societal information implanted in products that mediate personal identity as well as interpersonal associations. Advertising should thus be perceived as a vital part of the consumer society. This is because it generates patterned sequences of meaning which have a key role in social reproduction as well as personal socialisation. The "marketplace" can actually be perceived as a "cultural system" of sorts and not merely a method for the exchange of changes in the transactions involving products and money. It is the images as well as cultural symbolism that offer key insights into the character and operations involved in advertising. Cultural types of social communication actually generate meanings via non-discursive imagery which affects behaviour and consciousness in a subtle manner by allowing some kinds of behaviour and thought while delegitimizing others. For example, advertising suggests through its images affirmative presentations of self-assured "masculine" manners and illustrations of fashionable as well as well-groomed women and men who desire to be successful in finding spouses. Therefore, advertising offers improper as well as proper depictions of behaviour as well as role models for both women and men. The outcome of this is the development of a culture where a person’s image has a more significant role than his or her linguistic discourse. Visual imagery is non-discursive, and thus associative, fictive, emotional and iconic, whereas vocal imagery is discursive (Elkington, Hartigan and Schwab, 2008). Advertising has played a major role in the evolution into a new culture that is observed with image, and thus in the change from a book/print or discursive culture to an allegorical media culture. In the media culture, areas of social life from politics to religion come under the influence of the control of images. Persuasive images or the iconic representation of a product has a more considerable impact on decision-making and social behaviour than verbal discourse. Persuasive images can be engaged in without consumers even being fully conscious that they are absorbing the view; or without the material having to be translated into plain verbal interpretation. Advertising becomes a type of social communication that endorses distorted communication or just non-communication. Distortions like these are the result of techniques that are non-logical, non-rational, and imagistic. These images affect consumers unconsciously and subliminally. Advertising encourages "product fetishism" and a fixated consciousness that invests products, services, and consumers with figurative characteristics, linking commodities with socially popular qualities. Researches on commodity fetishism and the addition of other Marxian groups to the examination of advertising is Sut Jhally's focus in the work ‘Codes of Advertising’ (Chiu, Hsieh, Li and Lee, 2005). Jhally applies the factors such as use value, exchange value, commodity fetishism, and surplus value to researches conducted on communications styles of the media as well as advertising. Marx offers an authoritative assessment of bourgeois apologetics who assert that capitalism is justifiable because it supplies consumers with what they desire and meets all their pre-existing requirements. Marx argued that consumer requirements and ideologies were historically formed as a result of capitalism and therefore function as the indispensable factors in social reproduction. One major feature that divides the life experiences of consumers in the contemporary society is the disjointed experience of product and service consumption, particularly in the field of marketing communications. In America, through the eighties and nineties, 30-second television spots for advertisements succeeded the one-minute or longer advertisement spots of the 60s. At present, the 30-second spots are being outdone by the 20-, 15-, ten- and even five-second advertisement spots which are then divided into momentary flash images (Sutton and Klein, 2003). Customer Images These fleeting and kaleidoscopic forms are more and more being emulated in all human experiences as well as in all other varieties of the communication media like movies, music videos, the news media, and situation comedies. The reversals in consumption and production are the result of production losing its advantaged position in a consumption culture. Consumption has grown to be the means through which consumers identify their own as well as others’ self-images. Marketing, in general, tends to reinforce this tendency. It is also in this definition of self-image(s) through a person’s consumption that the customer starts to visualise the self as being a marketable thing that can be created and customised to be situated and promoted, as merchandise (Zineldin, 2006). The eventual outcome of this is the de-centring of the issue of concern. When the valued “subject” of the modernist consumer culture is de-centred and mistakenly identified as the object. It is also de-centred in that this ‘object’ becomes not just one, but a sum of numerous parts that are changeable according to the circumstances encountered by the object. Advertisements for Budweiser beer, Pepsi Cola, and Energizer batteries have from time to time shown the brand object as a type of protagonist (Amable, 2003). These products are shown as being capable of changing cats or dogs into party animals or overcoming evil persons. In such depictions, the human subject who is a consumer is at the margin. He or she is de-centred; taking pleasure in the depiction, and boldly revering the brand product. The modern marketing theory stays focused on the commodity even when the marketing model is widely accepted. Marketers have always believed consumer needs are always met by the items produced to satisfy those needs. The idea is that consumer contentment is the consequence of the “material” components in the product. Consequently, it will be presumed that it is the precious elements in the product that have intrinsic value. When the views of modernist theories are comprehended, this focus on the merchandise as the crystallisation of worth is not at all startling. Modernism stresses that the object is the essence of all economic operations. Comprehending this reality of the subject basically means understanding the character of all elements in the consumer’s environment. These elements are the basic forms that make up the object that determine what may be considered as being “genuine” and the “observable”. Therefore, consumer objects have, in past consumer cultures, determined the truth as defined by the human being. Consequently, whether in Marxist or capitalist ideologies, the associations between objects decide what can be viewed as being of value (Selnes, 2007). Objects are considered as being material and “genuine”. Images and ideas merely represent the genuine and the material. When left on their own they just become illusions. Still, even in the early twentieth century, marketers were conscious of the fact that it was not the manufactured goods but their image that had the real value. They were aware of the fact that in marketing, it was the product’s image which was marketed and not the commodity (Ransome, 2005). The product symbolized the image and the value that the image contained. The better the imagery, the more successful the item for consumption was. Recent successful marketing promotions highlight the developing recognition of this association between product and image. Esteemed marketing organisations like Nike are fully aware that their aim is not to sell shoes but to generate images (Nwankwo and Gbadamosi, 2011). Such establishments transmit an image, and not their manufactured commodity in their promotional campaigns. In essence, Nike commercials are usually a type of video poetry where impressive art elevates human sporting achievement to an inspirational level. The shoe product is just a symbol of this image. In the postmodern era, goods no longer project imagery; instead they fill the projected images. Customer Sovereignty The idea of consumer sovereignty is central to the beliefs of marketing as well as theorists. Even the business specialists, who are considered as being doubtful and pragmatic where theoretical marketing concepts are concerned, trust in this particular theoretical foundation of marketing and economic concepts (Stewart, 2006). The all important consumer is put on a pedestal and venerated. Successful marketing operations create a hyper-reality that the ordinary customer believes in because most of the time it is unanticipated and unusual but exhilarating and artistic. For example, the Disney Empire is actually founded on the creation of fantasy which is not actually a requirement but a product of the cooperation of Disney’s employees, consumers, reviewers, and agents (Hurley, 2005). This is also the case where the electronic corporations are concerned. For example, Apple’s Macintosh computer was not a requirement that was necessary for the consumers. It was simply a persuasively seductive computer vision with a “warm and responsive” image that had been created by Steve Jobs and his group. The actual computer product was then created to occupy this vision. Marketing practice, is, therefore, not really created by the model of a sovereign customer in the post modern world, as by the pursuit for an influential hyper-reality that marketers as well as consumers can believe in. It is not the consumer but the image that is considered as being sovereign. A good example of this is found in a Pepsi commercial that was shown not so long ago. A beautiful supermodel who neglected to consume the product was instantly transformed into an ugly mannish creature. What the marketers were inferring is that without the strength of the Pepsi’s image, any beautiful consumer will eventually disintegrate. The Importance of Marketing Marketing is one of the main drivers of change in the continuing transition from a modern to a postmodern society (Keller, 2003). In other words, together with the cultural industries as well as the mass media, marketing is at the front of the move into being a post modern society. In fact, the main thrust for this transformation is derived from marketing operations, media activities, and the area of popular culture. For example, the desire for a car is a determined desire that has been launched and imposed by society’s structuring of life owing to modern dealings of home and work. Then, the existence of a vehicle or two in a consumer’s garage generates needs for cable, time, rubber and gasoline. It may be considered as being too uncomplicated to categorically claim that the fundamental need for entertainment as well as mobility is the same. This is because such a response seeks to skip the fact needs that there are secondary needs that are usually viewed by consumers as being even more important than basic needs like shelter. The presence of the car, for example, totally changes the transportation methods used on a social level. At the personal level, its presence prioritises superficial needs as well as expenditure patterns. Conclusion The evolution into post-modernity is bringing about a reverse in the subject- object aspects of the consumption structure. In modernity, it was the consumer who was the knowing subject; and thus the one in control. He or she acted on the object to be consumed. In post-modernity, the consumer has become the object; and is thus the one that is consumed. It is the object that ‘decides’ based on a numerous significations which are supported by a symbolic scheme that recognises the functions and meanings of objects. The consumer finds that he or she can only contribute to this determination by being objectified, and by presenting him or herself as a marketable image. The idea of the consumer being the object is one that has been existent in the fashion industry for some time now. The fashion system has been generalised to the consumption scheme as a whole. At present, the notion of fashion consciousness permeates through all consumption – cosmetics, clothes, movies, music, food, appliances, cars, furniture, travel, and architecture. This is proof that every other (re)presentable facet of the post-modern consumer culture can be perceived as an image-producing performance. References Amable, B. (2003) The diversity of modern capitalism, Oxford University Press, London. Chiu, H.C., Hsieh, Y., Li, Y. & Lee, M. (2005) ‘Relationship marketing and consumer switching behavior’, Journal of Business Research, vol. 58, no. 12, p. 1681. Elkington, J., Hartigan, P. & Schwab, K. (2008) The power of unreasonable people: how social entrepreneurs create markets that change the world, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston. Hurley, R.F. (2005) ‘Customer service behavior in retail settings: a study of the effect of service provider personality’, J. Acad. Mark Sci., vol. 26, no.2, pp. 115-127. Keller, K.L. (2003) Strategic brand management: building, measuring and managing brand equity, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Nwankwo, S. & Gbadamosi, T. (2011) Entrepreneurship marketing: principles and practice of SME marketing, Routledge, London. Ransome, P. (2005) Work, consumption and culture: affluence and social change in the twenty-first century, SAGE, New York. Selnes, F. (2007) ‘An examination of the effect of product performance on brand reputation, satisfaction and loyalty’, J. Mark, vol.27, no. 9, pp. 19-35. Stewart, A. (2006) Accessing the American dream: utiliswing affinity marketing to reach underbanked populations, Chicago. Sutton, D. & Klein, T. (2003) Enterprise marketing management, John Wiley & Sons, Inc Publishing, New Jersey. Zineldin, M. (2006) ‘The royalty of loyalty: CRM, quality and retention’, J. Consum. Mark, vol. 23, no.7, pp. 430-437. Read More