Backing Up Marketing Buzzwords

The limited available empirical evidence indicates that consumer ethnocentrism does not have a uniform effect on consumer buying (e.g., Klein, Ettenson & Morris 1998; Suh & Kwon 2002). The paper comes to address this gap by investigating the inconsistency of ethnocentric behaviours and the factors underlying such inconsistencies. More specifically, brand, product category and country of origin (COO) effects are examined for their impact on behavioural consumer ethnocentric bias. Contrary to the main stream of research in this area, which concentrates on general attitudes towards the products or buying intentions (e.g., Balabanis & Diamantopoulos 2004; Poon et al. 2010; Sharma etal. 1995; Shimp & Sharma 1987; Verlegh 2007; Wang & Chen 2004) this paper focuses on behavioural outcomes of consumer ethnocentrism. In addition, it adopts a more focused approach and examines the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on the purchase of specific brands, rather than the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on general product categorisations or simple foreigndomestic product dichotomies. Hypotheses are developed to explain observed differences in the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 468 US consumers involving purchases in 10 product categories, 432 brands and 22 countries of origin. Results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. Consumer ethnocentrism was found to have an impact on the purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than the frequently purchase convenient items. There is also some limited evidence regarding the moderating role of globalness of brands on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase behaviour. The cultural proximity of the country of origin of foreign brands was found to have no effect on the purchasing behaviour of ethnocentric consumers.

Many consumer products are accompanied by written instructions. This paper explores the relationship between the claims that people make about reading these instructions and a number of other factors, including the characteristics of the product, the age of the consumer and the consumer's attitude to the product. Six product categories are examined ranging from complex electrical items such as videotape recorders to simple familiar products such as fish fingers. It is shown that product category is one of the determinants of people's willingness to read instructions. The age of the consumer was found to have no predictive value, but the consumer's assumptions about the simplicity of operation strongly determined whether the instructions would be read. Attitudes concerning familiarity, safety and cheapness of the product did not correlate with claims about reading instructions, but people claimed to be less likely to read the instructions of products used frequently. The implications of these data for manu...

In the high tech field, we are witnessing the proliferation of variable-geometry innovations with shape-shifting structures and architectures, combining different categories of products into a single one called New Hybrid Products (NHP). The design of these products informs the user about their affordance. This ability of design to suggest the potential uses of new hybrid products can be considered by companies to emphasize the distinctiveness and to facilitate the understanding, categorization, evaluation and adoption of new hybrid products.Our article poses some fundamental questions to designers about the place of affordance in the design of communicating new hybrid products and how to anticipate this affordance precisely in the case of variable-geometry innovations design (e.g. monolithic (made of a single block), protean (able to change shape) or modular (formed of various removable parts) designs).A qualitative study, which involved Hi-Tech design experts, explores the importance of variable-geometry innovations affordance and its implications on their willingness to conceive them. Our findings confirm the divergence in the literature on communicating new hybrid products affordance. The result of the study with the Hi-Tech design experts reveals the non-existence of a consensus on this issue. This divergence is visible as much for existing monolithic communicating NHPs such as smartphones and tablets as for the polymorphic communicating NHP studied in our research, namely, the « Flip phone ».Depending on whether the communicating new hybrid product has a monolithic or polymorphic form, it may or may not be perceived as affordant. Therefore, designers of communicating new hybrid products are reluctant to design these variable-geometry hybrid products. They prefer simple monolithic products to hybrid shape-shifting products, considered as difficult to understand, not at all intuitive and not very affordant.In addition to this multitude of issues raised, the theoretical and managerial implications of the study are finally addressed.KeywordsAffordanceDesignInnovationNew product development

Autologous platelet concentrates in maxillofacial regenerative therapy.

In recent years, significant qualitative changes have been observed in foreign trade of Russian regions, especially those distinguished by their border location. This applies both to the volume and structure of foreign trade flows and to their geography. The main reason for this is associated with increased geopolitical tensions, global shifts in markets and national and regional economies. Taken together, these changes are affecting the state and development of regions, including the conditions for growth of their economic complexity related to their positions in foreign markets. The study aims to assess the spatial polarization in foreign trade flows and to identify its impact on the development of a border region through economic complexity (with the Kaliningrad region taken as an example). Exclave position of the Kaliningrad region provides a perfect opportunity to assess patterns of change in foreign trade flows and their impact on the region's development conditions. We have established that changes in the geography of foreign trade flows occur predominantly for simpler products. The more complex the products, the less the polarization of foreign trade flows. However, an inverse correlation has been identified for complexity and spatial polarization. Consequently, regional development requires support for expanding the geography of trade partners within modern innovation-technology boundaries. The choice of key geographical markets is determined by the current potential for complexity growth in product categories and product types, as well as by the possibilities for developing new competencies to produce more diverse and complex goods.

Many seal of approval eco-labeling programs have begun to branch out into complex product categories, such as printers, computers, and copiers. Given the difficulty such programs have had in establishing environmental superiority in relatively simple product categories, such as bathroom tissue, the attempt to set criteria for environmentally preferable electronics would appear to be premature. To illustrate the difficulties in such an approach, this paper critiques the criteria established for workstation computers under the German Blue Angel program, the oldest and most widely recognized of the national seal programs. An analysis of these criteria from a life-cycle perspective strongly suggests that the Blue Angel criteria fail in their fundamental task of differentiating environmentally superior products. At best, the improvement differentials represented by the Blue Angel criteria represent an insignificant percentage of total expected burdens from the overall system. In some cases, the criteria may actually hinder improvements they are intended to encourage.

The mere categorization effect for complex products: The moderating role of expertise and affect

A partir do livro A farmácia de Platão, de Jacques Derrida, é rastreada, nos próprios textos platônicos, a admiração daquele filósofo grego pela então incipiente medicina hipocrática: ela se harmonizava com o método dialético de Platão, em oposição à estreiteza do método sofista, que se compunha melhor com a medicina pré-hipocrática dos charlatães curandeiros. Chega-se ao phármakon hipocrático, com suas primitivas e atuais propriedades de Droga, de Tintura, de Escritura e de Objeto Numinoso. E na atual Drugstore, que veio usurpar o tradicional espaço da farmácia, o phármakon ainda vem se mantendo como tal e não se esvazia na categoria inerte de um simples product; mas isso ocorre apenas através dos esforços da propaganda maciça, de exorbitâncias da pesquisa científica e da precariedade da maioria dos atendimentos médicos da atualidade. Também na psicofarmacologia, são muitas as modificações (patoplásticas) geradas pelas mutilações contemporâneas sofridas pelo phármakon; entre elas, o autor destaca que os phármakons antidepressivos podem propiciar, no reequilíbrio pulsional que favorecem, apenas uma espécie de “adiamento” da destruição e do triunfo sobre o objeto perdido no melancólico – não parecendo influir, apesar da aparente melhora no quadro clínico, na força sádica destrutiva do sujeito.

Really new products (RNPs) create new product categories or at least significantly expand existing ones. The development of RNPs is a strategic priority for most companies. However, 40% to 90% of new products fail, often due to consumers' lack of understanding of product features and benefits. Learning strategies, such as analogical learning and mental simulation, can help consumers understand the benefits of RNPs and thus may contribute to the successful development of marketing campaigns. Moreover, the presentation format of marketing communications is likely to influence consumers' understanding of the product. Pictorials have the potential to convey novel information without overloading the decision maker and thus may be a more efficient way to present information about RNPs than words. This paper contributes to a better understanding of consumer information processing in learning for RNPs. Study 1 examined the impact of (1) learning strategies (analogical learning vs. mental simulation) and (2) presentation formats (words vs. pictures) on product comprehension. Study 2 used an eye‐tracking experiment to assess how respondents' visual attention patterns may affect product comprehension. Study 1 showed that the use of words in marketing communications for RNPs is generally more effective to enhance product comprehension than the use of pictorials. However, the video glasses were a notable exception as the combination of mental simulation and pictures yielded a high comprehension level for this product. This suggests that the use of pictorials may be appropriate to convey information for products of a more hedonic as opposed to utilitarian nature. Study 2 used a combination of eye‐tracking measures and self‐reports to help illuminate the cognitive processes at work when consumers learn new product information. The results suggest that an increase in attention to an element of the advert can account for one of two underlying processes: (1) an increase in comprehension; or (2) a difficulty to understand product information which may result in consumer confusion. This study adds evidence to a growing body of literature that demonstrates the power of learning strategies such as mental simulation and analogical learning in preparing consumers for new product acceptance. The use of visual stimuli contributes to the debate on the effectiveness of words versus pictures, seldom applied in a new product development (NPD) context. These findings are integrated into a discussion of the managerial implications and the potential avenues for future research in the area.

Ernaux's Testimony of Shame Lawrence D. Kritzman ANNIE ERNAUX'S LA HONTE (1997) is a semi-autobiographical work in which the author explores how a traumatic memory is stored and frozen in the mind.' Her reflection is built on the assumption that memory can never be truly authenticated since traumatic experience precludes direct access to testimony. "Il n'y a pas de vraie mémoire de soi" (37). Consequently her attempt to remember things past, the adolescent youth of the summer of 1952 as "little Annie D," constitutes a quest for understanding unimpeded by the imposition of an artificial reality. "Naturellement pas de récit, qui produirait une réalité au lieu de la chercher" (38). Based on the premise that language puts memory into question, it reflects, however, on the manner in which one perceives the world and takes hold of one's life story however elusive it may be. "Ce qui m'importe, c'est de retrouver les mots avec lesquels je me pensais et pensais le monde autour. Dire ce qu'étaient pour moi le normal et l'inadmissable , l'impensable même" (37). What Emaux recognizes must remain an incomplete narrative nevertheless affords her the possibility of engaging in a cognitive performance capable of unraveling unassimilated memory. In so doing, Ernaux's story suggests that the initial shamefulness prompting her to find the words to "dire l'inadmissible" also entails, and perhaps even requires, the provisional adoption of a mask of shameless normality and invisibility ("dire Ie normal"). Until Emaux is able to do this she cannot let herself feel authorized to take pleasure in being the object of the gaze without the accompanying fear of experiencing affective confinement. At the core of Ernaux's writerly quest is the desire to describe the etiology of her perception of shame. She situates the birth of this feeling in an event of domestic violence that she witnessed in June 1952. "Mon père a voulu tuer ma mère un dimanche de juin, au début de l'après-midi" (16). This scene of primitive violence revealed the dark forces that fatally marked her existence as being flawed and committed her to an interminable feeling of malaise. Trauma, which literally signifies "injury" or "wound," signals, as Freud has suggested, a situation of helplessness and the anxiety that it produces. Victim of an affective paralysis, Emaux lived with a story that she was unable to put into words. "J'ai toujours eu cette scène en moi comme une image sans mots ni phrases" (17). The image of violence imprinted on the mind's eye makes evident the act of bearing witness as well as its failure to be articulated Vol. XXXIX, No. 4 139 L'Esprit Créateur discursively. Ernaux's testimony neither effaces the truth nor attempts to deny it. Yet she cannot undo the shock of the event since the act of witnessing paradoxically realizes what Cathy Carath terms "the witnessing, precisely of impossibility."2 Instead of experiencing a sense of immediacy while observing a photographic image of herself at age twelve, the mature writer now discovers in it an uncertainty that allows her to fall prey to mis-recognition and an inability to repossess the mystery of the past. "Je ne croirais pas qu'il s'agisse de moi. (Certitude que 'c'est moi', impossibilité de me reconnaître, 'ce n'est pas moi')" (25). The traumatic event, the violence her father inflicted on her mother, functions as a disruption in the continuity of experience and necessitates an ellipsis in the narrative of her life's story. "Nulle part il n'y avait de place pour la scène du dimanche de juin" (108). The adolescent girl was obliged to efface the experience that pained her. The wound that is the result of the event, the shock of seeing her mother stricken: the impact of this trauma short-circuited the assignment of meaning and ultimately rendered language somewhat obtuse. "Les mots que je retrouve sont opaques, des pierres impossibles à bouger" (69). In this context memory became the site of the unthinkable, making the young subject immune to self-expression. "Il n'y avait...