Selling organic candy: multimodal critical discourse analysis of commercial websites

Abstract

PurposeThis paper examines how organic candies are marketed as healthy and ethical choices on commercial websites through the use of visual, rhetorical and promotional strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis to identify the narratives and discursive traits that organic candy manufacturers reproduce on their websites as part of their ethical branding policy. The dataset is formed by 10 websites that commercialize organic confectionery.FindingsThe findings indicate that sellers try to associate organic candy to healthiness, simple and traditional lifestyles and social awareness to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Often the ethical claims that organic candy websites reproduce are not justified.Research limitations/implicationsA major limitation of this study is that the investigation does not evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical and discursive strategies on real consumer decisions. Further research of an ethnographic or empirical nature would be required for this purpose.Practical implicationsThis study recognizes the strategies that organic candy sellers reproduce can help consumers make more informed choices. From the point of view of marketers, understanding the multimodal, rhetorical and discursive strategies that organic candy brands employ can be useful to devise their own marketing approaches.Originality/valueThe investigation contributes to a growing body of research about multimodal critical discourse analysis within food marketing studies. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper that analyses organic candy branding from a multimodal perspective.

Food discourse: ethics and aesthetics on Instagram

“…This analysis is rooted in different disciplinary areas (linguistic to analyse verbal analysis, art and semiotics in the case of images) and accords equal importance to all the components adopting a unifying approach to meaning-making, within a social and temporal frame (Kress, 2013). In food marketing studies, this method has been used to explore communication strategies to promote organic candy and the ethical issues raised by this product (Fernández-Vázques, 2021) and to reflect on the social science discourses about veganism (Cole, 2008). This paper proposes the application of MCDA to videos.…”

“Welcome to pure food city”: tracing discourses of health in the promotional publications of the Postum Cereal Company, 1920-1925

“…Specifically, the three types of promotional publications identified and the linguistic/semiotic strategies they use can serve as categorisation criteria for future marketing studies into the promotional publications of other food brands, as well as a starting point to track their evolution over the past 100 years. On a theoretical level, the historical application of MCDA is also important for the development of social semiotics as, too often, the theory is applied only to contemporary forms of advertising, which risks overstating the novelty of certain marketing practices (Makoni, 2012; Edwards and Milani, 2014; Brookes et al , 2016; Rodgers, 2020; Bouvier and Chen, 2021; Fernández-Vázquez, 2021; Chen and Eriksson, 2022). Now in the internet age, promotional pamphlets/books have taken a new form online on product websites and social media pages, yet many of the same strategies as those in the 1920s are used to convey openness and transparency, social consciousness and health.…”