The Barbie Doll was created by Ruth Handler in 1959 with the thought of showing young girls (first of all her own daughter) what they can become when they grow up. Ever since then many variants of Barbie looks have been developed, manufactured and marketed by the company originally founded by her husband Elliott with… Read More
Extracting the Meaning, Visually
Visual rhetorical figures are not so common in advertising; good examples are hard to find. They are used infrequently probably because they require more elaboration by consumers-viewers to interpret the implicit meaning embedded in a visual rhetorical representation. Nevertheless, considering the increasing use of images in many spheres of life, including in marketing contexts, and… Read More
Recording Open-Ended Answers in Video
A new capability has been added to consumer and customer surveys in the past few years: Capturing the answers of respondents to open-ended questions in video, recorded in particular by a respondent on his or her mobile phone in selfie-mode. For many users of smartphones it should come as a natural and instinctive way to… Read More
Who Owns the Brand?
There is an on-going debate on who owns brands. There are some who argue that the company that created a brand is its owner, fully in command of it. This is the formal straightforward view. However, support grows for the claim that customers are the true owners of a brand. Essentially, a brand is still… Read More
Consumer / Shopper / Customer Behaviour 