Orientador: Edson Roberto Scharf. / Dissertação (Mestrado em Administração) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração, Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas, Universidade Regional de Blumenau, Blumenau.

by Lee Siu-Po & Yu Pun-Wai. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references. / Abstract --- p.ii / Table of Contents --- p.iii / List of Figures and Tables --- p.iv / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Literature Review --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Research Objective --- p.14 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Research Methodology --- p.19 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Research Results --- p.26 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Conclusion and Recommendation --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Limitations --- p.41 / References --- p.44 / Appendices --- p.45 / Chapter 1. --- Annotated Questionnaire --- p.46 / Chapter 2. --- Table 1 - SPSS Results of the Questionnaire --- p.70 / Chapter 3. --- Table 2 - Tables of Z-values by Brands --- p.73 / Chapter 4. --- Table 3 - Tables of F-values by Brands --- p.75 / Chapter 5. --- Graphical Comparisons of Overall Impressions --- p.77

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The significance of brands within our media-intensive culture can hardly be overstated. Having emerged in the mid-20th century as platforms for the distribution of commodities, brands have since become, as scholar Celia Lury argues, “the logos of the global economy.” Brand interfaces not only differentiate mass production, but produce cultural assemblages that rewrite social and political relations. This dissertation concerns itself with the meaning of theatrical production within brand performance, with a specific focus on the Walt Disney Company. Although there are many corporate producers in commercial theatre today — Warner Brothers, MGM, Universal, and Cirque du Soleil, to name a few — Disney has the distinction of being the first to make live theatre a cornerstone of its brand relationships. Disney has also had, in branding terms, the most depth, breadth and consistency of any global entertainment brand. Using the concept of assemblage as an applied framework, I consider how Disney’s brand theatre functions as a form of communicative/affective capitalism, as an interface for consumer interactivity and exchange. Following Deleuze and Guattari, DeLanda and Lury, I argue that Disney’s theatre assemblages are heterogeneous, contingent, emergent and most of all generative. At the heart of this project is the question of how Disney’s theatre assemblages cohere – the question of identifiable, intensive continuities. What kinds of historical contingencies are replicated in Disney’s texts and territories? How does the company code cultural flows? In what ways are Disney’s theatre assemblages networked to social formations like childhood, gender, race, sexuality, and nation? What kinds of consumer interactions and socio-technical conditions are most important to the ongoing process of developing brand relations? Although Disney’s multi-modal theatre assemblages are a function of neoliberal logic and labor norms, and sustain dominant modes of production, they are also highly mutable, often supporting contested claims of intelligibility and citizenship. The company produces a vast range of theatre experiences. This dissertation focuses on character encounters, children’s theatre, Broadway musicals, a re-creation of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and animal/safari performance. The chapters are composed as a nested set of assemblages, starting with theatre for Disney’s most important demographic: children. I then move into larger social fields/assemblages, considering theatre that addresses the nation, theatre that reframes transnational/global space, and finally, animal/ecological theatre. Taken together, the chapters present an argument for the significance of brand theatre as a localized, expressive, collaborative and extremely flexible site of cultural affiliation, agency and assembly.

This mixed-method study investigated the correlation of sound symbolic associations with age and gender by analyzing data from a national survey of 292 American English speakers. Subjects used 10 semantic differential scales to rate six artificial brand names that targeted five phonemes. Subjects also described the potential products they imagined these artificial brand names to represent. Quantitative analysis alone provided insufficient evidence to conclude that age or gender affect sound symbolism in American English. While 26 out of 60 scales showed a monotonic shift among the means of the three age groups, only three were statistically significant. The evidence of differences between genders was similarly weak; only five scales out of 60 showed a statistically significant difference when comparing genders. Analysis of the qualitative data, however, suggested both monotonic generational shifts as well as generational blips in sound-symbolic associations. Of particular interest is the possible influence of pop culture, fashions, and fads, and society's shifting focus from broadcast to narrowcast media. The implications of this research are relevant for both theory (empirical evidence for iconicity in language) and application (e.g., devising brand names that communicate particular attributes to specific demographics).

This dissertation explores the maker economy and culture in Detroit, MI and Portland, OR and queries the "Made in Place" branding strategy that relies so heavily on a shared imagination of cities, identities, and values. Bridging the gap between urban economic development, political economy, and affect theory, this dissertation is centrally concerned with how imagination works as a commons and how such "imaginaries" shape each city's milieu of small, entrepreneurial, artisanal producers ("makers"). The constituent elements of "Made in" branding "made" and "place" suggest common understandings of each; this sense of coherence is critical for how value is added to a maker's product. Rather than coherence, however, my data revealed a great deal of tension and ambiguity: how can something be coherent, ambiguous, and mobilized as economic value all at the same time? I answer this question by analyzing data from over 70 interviews with makers in Detroit and Portland, two cities experiencing rapid development and perceptive shifts from "old" to "new." I conclude that the various imaginaries so critical to "Made in Place" branding suggest not just economic rationality, but also a desire for stability in a turbulent world. Theoretically informed by Lauren Berlant, Gilles Deleuze, and Walter Benjamin, I argue that makers' imaginaries of identity, value, and place provide a collective sense of grounding amidst the flux of transition and uncertainty.

In this two years master's thesis a regional project, Futurum.kom, is studied through the experiences of eight librarians from two of the participating libraries. The interviewees have all attended local and regional seminars where questions about core values, target groups and the role of the public library were discussed, among others. The seminars resulted in a number of core values and target groups. During the project, a number of advertising campaigns are to be conducted. The first one of these had recently been implemented at the time of the present study.  The aim of the thesis is to investigate the interviewees organizational self-perception in relation to the project. Potential outcomes regarding the professional role are also studied. The thesis takes its theoretical premiss in theories of organizational identity, as well as in the concept of marketing culture. A qualitative method of semi-structured interviews is used. Results show an increased self-reflection, expressed through questioning what the library is, and who it is for. Also, an increased communicative awareness seems to have been developed, partly through the project. Although results are vague, there seems to be an ongoing shift in the organizational self-perception, manifested by an identified need of changed work procedures. In this respect, results indicate that the way of thinking about the library tends to be somewhat less library-centered and reactive, and more customer-focused and proactive, which is generally positively perceived. It is argued that the project can be understood as “management of meaning”; i.e. the project, its target groups and core values, supports a shift towards a stronger marketing culture. Although the core values as such seem to have had various impact, they do play a part in the questioning-process described above. Regarding the larger library, the project in many ways can be said to support the market-oriented approach that has previously been implemented. It therefore seems plausible that the change in organizational self-perception is more profound to the smaller library.

As a consequence of global interaction, real time news availability, consumer generated media and content, countries have become increasingly aware of their image internally and internationally. In response to this awareness, some countries have adopted advertising and marketing practices to manage their country image. A review of the literature shows that there is much room for growth on nation brand research. For example, contemporary empirical research on national character is limited in that the research tends to incorporate human personality traits to define the brand or character of countries. Since the research tradition in national character roots itself in the early to mid-20th century around the same time that human personality research is beginning to flourish, there is no surprise for the influence of using human personality traits to describe nations. Unfortunately, a nation brand is more complex than what can be explained by human personality traits. Another example of limitations in the literature are the many case studies of branding nations that do not provide sufficient empirical methods to analyze the nation brands. Contributing to this problem is the lack of consistent usage of a standard term to refer to the concept of a nation brand. To this end, this dissertation first makes an argument as to why nation brand is the appropriate name for this stream of research. Thereafter, the research and approach presented provides a definition of the nation brand hypothetical construct and investigates the underlying dimensions of that construct. This dissertation is comprised of three studies using one survey in each of them. The first two surveys are used to generate a list of stimulus countries and a list of country attributes that are used in the third survey. Qualitative analyses are applied in the first two surveys, and exploratory factor analysis is used in the third survey. The results show a reliable and interpretable 3-factor model. Conceding sampling issues and cautioning the reader to consider the results with care, the findings herein can serve as a springboard for future research in this area.

This study investigates the role of integrated marketing communications in building customer based brand equity. The study was conducted in Pietermaritzburg and Durban in South Africa using the consumers of the Coca Cola brand as the study subjects. The aim of the study was to determine the differential effect that knowledge of the Coca Cola brand has on consumers’ responses to the marketing of the brand. The study commenced with a survey of literature related to the fields of integrated marketing communications and customer based brand equity. The theoretical framework was determined to be the customer based brand equity model of Keller (2008: 60). For the empirical research, the quantitative research methodology was employed. The primary data was collected from a sample of 285 Coca Cola drinkers from Pietermaritzburg and Durban in South Africa. The findings from the theoretical survey revealed that there are several promotional mix tools that can be used to market a brand and that these can be used in brand building to precipitate the strong, favourable and unique brand associations that are necessary for the development of brand equity. The results of the empirical study revealed that the Coca Cola brand does indeed employ several marketing communications tools and that they have been integrated in such a way that they present a cohesive and consistent message. Respondents revealed that this integration of communications has an impact on their attitudes and beliefs about the brand. The research determined that Coca Cola is a highly salient brand in the minds of consumers and that they hold positive associations about the brand. The study determined however that although they hold strong, favourable and unique brand association of the brand in their minds, the majority of respondents do not have the attitudinal attachment, active involvement and sense of community that are necessary for brand resonance. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-185). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xii, 185 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm