Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 72).

Doing business "the French way" in a Francophone market niche may be somehow different from doing it "the English way" in an Anglophone market niche. Since both the employees’ and the customers’ knowledge of an organisation underpins the organisation’s performance in complex business world environments, Multinational Organisations (MNOs) need to find a manner in which they can achieve coherence between their strategic vision, organisational culture and corporate image across the different linguistic and socio-economic markets they interact with through the various marketing tools they use to stimulate recognition. As a result this can support the integrity and sustainability of their corporate brand across markets and across different linguistics landscapes while interacting with their existing and new foreign markets. This study concentrates particularly on the rhetoric figures and visual cues employed in the selected French and English advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements and different product packages of multinational organisation subsidiaries. The study looks at how both the rhetoric figures and visual cues in the selected advertising/promotional messages support the integrity and maintain the sustainability of the corporate brand of the selected companies. The latter is examined across different linguistic and socio-economic markets. The study explores and examines how the possible linguistic properties are used in the selected French and English advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements, including those on different product packages. It also looks at how the linguistic properties in selected advertising/promotional messages belonging to different types of advertisements are used in creating and maintaining a positive corporate image of the MNOs and that of their parent companies. In addition, this study analyzes the potential impacts and challenges on moral, cultural and life-style values that multinational subsidiaries inflict on customers through the advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements in the promotion and branding of their products and how this affects their corporate image and that of their parent organisations. This is a content analytical study of language features evident in the selected advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements and different product packages at the lexical, syntactic and discourse levels and their role and impact on selected multinational parent organisations and their subsidiaries’ corporate images together with those of their selected products. In order to conduct a data-driven study, the author built a data corpus based on 29 advertising messages from different types of advertisements and advertising messages printed on different product packages. The types of advertisements include the photographs and scanned images of billboards, mural billboards, outdoor advertising billboards and leaflets advertising/promoting specific services or products. The product packages include photographs and scanned images of product covers/wraps, primary packages of products, product containers’ stickers with messages printed on them, and primary boxes. The sample comes from six selected multinational subsidiary organisations from two different countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Francophone and multilingual country, and the Republic of South Africa, an Anglophone and multilingual country. Through a detailed content analysis of the advertising/promotional messages from a diversity of sources used as a means of communication, with a focus on rhetoric figures ,visual cues and language features, their roles and potential impact on MNO’s, corporate images in foreign markets will be summarized. In the end, possible conclusions are drawn in the light of the role and impact that they have on the selected companies’ corporate image across different linguistic and socio-economic markets.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 106-110)

Cette recherche se positionne dans un contexte de parrainage d'une cause par une marque, et plus précisément dans le cadre d'une publicité de soutien en faveur d'une cause environnementale. Elle vise notamment à répondre à la problématique suivante : comment améliorer l'efficacité d'une publicité de soutien ? La littérature a mis en exergue le rôle majeur joué par la congruence/incongruence perçue entre le parrain et l'entité parrainée, mais ce concept fait néanmoins débat depuis plus de trente ans dans la littérature marketing (Fleck et Maille, 2010 ; Maille et Fleck, 2011). Les objectifs de la recherche imposent une phase importante de meilleure compréhension du concept et de sa mesure (études 1 et 2). L'étude 3, utilisant de manière originale l'approche tétraclasse, propose une nouvelle conceptualisation basée sur l'identification des éléments de contribution à la congruence et à l'incongruence. Sur la base de ces résultats, deux outils de mesure sont proposés permettant de mieux appréhender la congruence perçue et l'incongruence perçue (étude 4). Puis cette recherche étudie, au moyen d'une expérimentation (étude 5), dans quelle mesure et de quelle manière l'articulation du parrainage (explication du lien entre le parrain et l'entité parrainée) peut influencer les intentions comportementales envers la cause soutenue. Les résultats soulignent que la congruence perçue, l'incongruence perçue et la crédibilité du parrain sont médiatrices de l'effet de l'articulation du parrainage sur les intentions comportementales envers la cause soutenue, mais avec une différence d'effet entre congruence et incongruence. En effet, si l'articulation du parrainage influence positivement la crédibilité du parrain en augmentant la congruence perçue et en diminuant l'incongruence perçue entre la marque et l'organisation non commerciale, l'effet de la congruence perçue sur les intentions comportementales envers la cause n'est pas médiatisé par la crédibilité perçue du parrain, à la différence de l'effet de l'incongruence perçue qui est bien médiatisé par cette crédibilité. / This research takes place in the context of cause sponsoring by a brand, and more precisely within the framework of environmental issue advocacy advertising. It aims in particular at answering the following question: how to improve the efficiency of advocacy advertising? Previous research highlighted the major role played by perceived congruency/incongruency between the sponsor and the sponsored entity, but this concept has been still discussed for more than thirty years in the marketing literature (Fleck and Maille, 2010; Maille and Fleck, 2011). The objectives of this research require to better understand the concept and its measure (studies 1 and 2). Study 3 uses in an original way the tetraclass approach to propose a new conceptualization of the concept based on the identification of elements that contribute to congruency and to incongruency. Based on these results, two measurement tools allowing to separately capture perceived congruency and perceived incongruency are proposed (study 4). Then this research examines through an experiment (study 5) to what extent and how sponsorship articulation (the explanation of the link between the sponsor and the sponsored entity) can influence behavioral intentions toward the supported cause. The results underline that perceived congruency, perceived incongruency and sponsor credibility mediate the effect of sponsorship articulation on behavioral intentions toward the supported cause but throughout a different effect on perceived congruency and on perceived incongruency: 1/sponsorship articulation influences positively sponsor credibility due to an increase in perceived congruency and a decrease in perceived incongruency between the brand and the not commercial organization, 2/ the effect of perceived congruency on behavioral intentions toward the cause is not explained by sponsor credibility while the effect of perceived incongruency is explained by sponsor credibility.