Buying and buying into the ideal child

Pursuing the meaning of meaning in the commercial world: An international review of marketing and consumer research founded on semiotics

“…For example, Pedersen's (2002) analysis of the multi-layered meanings of breakfast cereal ads suggests that advertisers are playing with verbal and visual signs in more unexpected and aggressive ways, presumably to keep consumers from being as readily defensive or uncooperative in perceiving brand meanings that the marketer prefers and seeks to potentiate. As a result, a crisis in sign value is alleged to have risen in which the bind between signifier and signified has disintegrated to the point where connections to any real and identifiable referent have been severed (see also Chébat and Marchand 1998;Urbancic 1998). Nonetheless, the Japanese scholar Aoki (1993) has suggested that, rather than a simple main e¤ect of increasing rhetoric or hypersignification in advertising, economic conditions may moderate this trend.…”

“…Solomon 1988), toys (J. Urbancic 1998), jewelry (Espe 1992;Mortelsman 1998), cosmetics (Dano, Roux, and Nyeck 2003), pets (Hirschman 2002), postage stamps (Scott 1995(Scott , 1997a, and domestic furnishings and utensils (Floch 2000(Floch [1995; Krampen 1995). Automobiles have been a popular focus for semiotic analysis, with their meanings often tied to Western science and technology, sociocultural status and power, and personal freedom and escape.…”