Presenting Consumer Technology with Pop: A Rhetorical and Ethnographic Exploration of Point-of-Purchase Advertising

Abstract

Point-of-purchase advertising (POP) is responsible for half of the purchase decisions made in the store. Because of: 1) the influence of POP on the sale of technical consumer products and the economy; 2) our need to understand trends that shape technical and business communication; 3) the intermedial nature of POP (where spoken and written words work with place, visual image, physical structures, and multimedia integrated marketing campaigns); and 4) its theatrical and local nature, we need both a situated and theoretical exploration of POP. Drawing upon three months' participant observation in advertising, I describe a POP composing process in an integrated marketing campaign. Cognitive responses to layout and the interrelation of rhetorical canons are considered for preparing communication for a marketplace that is three-dimensional variegated, noisy, and peripatetic.