Cambios en la significación social del consumo de bebidas alcohólicas en la parroquia indígena de Cacha, provincia de Chimborazo, Ecuador, a partir de la propagación de la religión evangélica: una perspectiva de estudios culturales

En las últimas décadas, muchos indígenas andinos se han convertido a la religión evangélica y han dejado de tomar bebidas alcohólicas. La trascendencia de esta vertiginosa transformación -en función de que muchas de las prácticas que implicaban el consumo de alcohol han sido, por siglos, centrales en la reproducción cultural de las sociedades indígenas- no puede ser menos que desconcertante. En unos pocos años, comunidades enteras han dejado de tomar, transformando, paralelamente, tanto su ethos como su cosmovisión, tanto sus prácticas y significados culturales como sus creencias religiosas. Circunscribiéndonos a la parroquia de Cacha, una jurisdicción indígena en la sierra central del Ecuador, el propósito de este trabajo de investigación es explicar, en función de los significados y valores que los propios pobladores asignan a sus prácticas y artefactos culturales, por qué y cómo muchos de ellos han dejado de tomar. Utilizando las concepciones teóricas y metodológicas de los estudios culturales, esta tentativa es un trabajo etnográfico de interpretación que analiza en qué consistía la significación de las prácticas culturales del consumo de bebidas alcohólicas hasta antes de la emergencia de la religión evangélica y cómo se ha transformado, esa significación, a partir de entonces. La propuesta principal argumenta que la conversión a la religión evangélica obedece a la necesidad de los pobladores de poder definir y administrar los graves problemas que el exceso de alcohol estaba causando entre ellos.

Deviant disabilities: the exclusion of drug and alcohol addiction from the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010, in keeping with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, excludes those identified as drug and alcohol ‘addicted’ from the scope of provisions prohibiting discrimination against disabled people. This article addresses the significance of, and justification for, this exclusion. It begins with a legislative background to the relevant limitation and subsequently examines its rationale according to prevailing legal, medical and sociological discourses. The article then considers the relevance of the discussion for disability rights. Although ‘addiction’, or the preferred term, ‘substance dependence’, is classified as a disability for international systems of disease classification, the relevance of substance dependence for discussion on disability rights, and of disability for discussion on substance dependence, has largely escaped critical comment.

Emerging segmentation practices in the age of the social customer

This paper reports on an exploratory study of segmentation practices of organisations with a social media presence. It investigates whether traditional segmentation approaches are still relevant in this new socio-technical environment and identifies emerging practices. The study found that social media are particularly promising in terms of targeting influencers, enabling the cost-effective delivery of personalised messages and engaging with numerous customer segments in a differentiated way. However, some problems previously identified in the segmentation literature still occur in the social media environment, such as the technical challenge of integrating databases, the preference for pragmatic rather than complex solutions and the lack of relevant analytical skills. Overall, a gap has emerged between marketing theory and practice. While segmentation is far from obsolete in the age of the social customer, it needs to adapt to reflect the characteristics of the new media.

The level of compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes: does it matter to stock markets?

The present paper explores, theoretically, and empirically, whether compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes impacts on financial performance measured by stock markets. The empirical analysis, which considers a 20-year period, shows that stock markets are indifferent to the level of compliance by manufacturers with the International Code. Two important issues emerge from this result. Based on our finding that financial performance as measured by stock markets cannot explain the level of compliance, the first issue refers to what alternative types of mechanisms drive manufacturers who comply the least with voluntary codes such as the International Code. Conversely, from our finding that stock markets do not reward the most compliant, the second issue raised is an inherent weakness of stock markets to fully incorporate social and environmental values.

Knowledge dissemination in the global service marketing community

Purpose– The evolution of the service marketing field was marked by the emergence of a global, vigorous and tolerant community of service marketing researchers. This paper seeks to examine the history of the service marketing community and argues that it may be an archetype for building the emergent global service research community. Design/methodology/approach– The study combines qualitative and quantitative approaches. The authors interviewed four pioneering service scholars and also collected descriptive data (e.g. Authorship, Affiliation, Title, Keywords) of all service related articles published in 13 top peer‐reviewed marketing and service journals over the last 30 years (5,432 articles; 6,450 authors). In a dynamic analysis the authors mapped global collaboration between countries over time and detected clusters of international collaboration. Findings– Findings suggest a growing international collaboration for the USA and the UK, while for other countries like Israel the global collaboration started from a high level and decreases now. Further, the service marketing community never became polarized and there were always contributions from researchers all over the world. Research limitations/implications– As the global service research community is developing, service marketing becomes a research neighborhood within the broader service research community. Simultaneously, other research neighborhoods are emerging within this new community (e.g. service arts, service management, service engineering, service science). Originality/value– Anchored on the social evolution and biological evolution metaphors, this study explains the evolution of the service marketing field from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Furthermore, it explains the development of the service marketing community as an archetype for building the global service research community.

Why your customers’ social identities matter

The article looks at the role of consumers' social identities in their purchasing decisions, and hence in the creation of effective marketing strategies. It says that people generally belong to multiple social groups, any one of which may have the most salience for them in a given situation. It reports on social psychology research on how a person's connection with a particular social identity can be triggered and discusses the idea in the context of marketing products including the Toyota Prius hybrid-electric automobile, Nescafé instant coffee, and the Jeep all-terrain vehicle. INSET: Lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Standing on the shoulders of giants: an examination of the interdisciplinary foundation of relationship marketing

In the 20th century, the scholarly study of human relationships both grew dramatically and simultaneously fragmented into various disciplines and subdisciplines. Although diversity of thought is generally considered helpful for the evolution of scientific fields, the value accrued from interdisciplinary discourse depends on the ability of scholars to integrate multiple perspectives and synthesize foundational works in a systematic manner. The goal of this study is to synthesize foundational theories from social and behavioral sciences that have contributed to an understanding of relationship marketing. In seeking to provide a holistic understanding of the field, we incorporate contributions from the disciplines of marketing, management, psychology, and sociology. In building on our analysis, we synthesize our findings into a conceptual model that examines the systematic dimensions of relationship marketing. The article concludes by identifying key themes for contributors to the Journal of Relationship Marketing to consider going forward.

Viral marketing and the new competitive advantage

The role played by viral marketing has received considerable academic and digital media attention recently. Key issues in viral marketing have been examined through the lens of the mode of marketing message transmission, including self-replicating on the basis of quality difference, individuals’ emotional needs, as well as how users are connected across various social networks. This paper presents a review and analysis of viral marketing studies from 2001 to the present day. It investigates how viral marketing facilitate the diffusion of social media products and the relationship between marketers and these product users by taking a look at the implementation of viral marketing in two European online game firms Jagex Games Studio and Rovio Entertainment. The results from this review and analysis indicate that viral marketing plays an important role in accelerating the interaction between marketers and users (as well as the user groups) in the field of digital media and high tech consumption. Therefore, it is evident that firms should understand the social contagion process and target well-connected users purposefully in order to create its competitive advantage.

Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity.In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of languages, and the country is officially bilingual. In this paper, we will look at attempts to maintain and grow the number of speakers of the language and at the relevance of this development for speakers of minority languages in other settings.

Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS

This paper explores the identities projected in advertisements directed towards HIV positive individuals and people with AIDS. Fifty such advertisements were collected from three popular American magazines for gay men over a period of seven months. Analysis of the ads reveals a paradoxical presentation of people with HIV/AIDS, which offers simultaneous conflicting images of hope and fear, power and weakness, innocence and guilt. An interactive sociolinguistic model through which this contradictory discourse might be understood is presented, drawing on Goffman’s insights on stigma management and the presentation of the self in social interaction. Advertisements directed towards people with HIV/AIDS, it is suggested, present a contradictory discourse in which the advertisers are positioned as ‘the wise’, offering to mediate the conflicting identities of the stigmatized. The identity values enacted in this contradictory discourse are further measured against American conceptions of communication and the self as observed by Carbaugh and others. The possible consequences of these positionings on the roles made available to people with HIV/AIDS in the wider social context are discussed.

A percepção da comunidade sobre a contribuição econômica e social de uma empresa de comunicações para o desenvolvimento regional : o caso da RBS TV Uruguaiana ltda.

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de caso realizado na RBS TV Uruguaiana Ltda., localizada na Fronteira Oeste do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, avaliando a participação da empresa no desenvolvimento econômico, social e cultural da região. Nesse sentido, uma pesquisa survey de natureza exploratória, tipo “entrevistas face a face”, foi realizada em duas etapas: a primeira busca avaliar a percepção do telespectador, na sua maioria clientes; e a segunda, a do público interno, na maior parte gestores, busca a percepção do funcionário sobre a organização. Confrontam-se todos os resultados com os de uma pesquisa de satisfação, realizada pelo CEPA/UFRGS, em novembro de 2000. O trabalho também procura fazer uma avaliação sobre a organização estudada, em que ela se confunde com os sentimentos das pessoas, pelo conteúdo dos produtos apresentados ao público, principalmente, numa pequena comunidade. Leva-se ainda em consideração o fato de a televisão representar o centro das atenções, tendo em vista o nível de interferência que a mídia televisiva exerce sobre as pessoas, fascinando e levando o telespectador a situações em que o indivíduo se identifica com personagens, criados por ela em seus diversos produtos, seja de entretenimento ou de informação, seja em rede nacional, estadual ou local. Por último, tenta-se identifica o verdadeiro papel de um veículo de comunicação e sua atuação junto à comunidade, uma vez que o modelo de transmitir informações que atinge mais objetivamente os propósitos jornalísticos, principalmente no Brasil, é a televisão, em que a informação está centrada na mídia eletrônica. A atuação efetiva deste importante veículo dá uma percepção de apoio e conforto ao cidadão, não atribuído a nenhum outro organismo governamental ou privado, como ficou evidenciado na avaliação dos pesquisados.

Marketing Cultural : um estudo sobre patrocínio de eventos culturais em Porto Alegre

O Marketing Cultural, delimitado ao seu uso como ferramenta de marketing institucional através de patrocínio de eventos culturais, vem crescendo de forma expressiva no Brasil e no mundo. Poucos estudos acadêmicos têm sido realizados sobre o tema. Pesquisas sobre avaliação de resultados de ações de patrocínio à cultura são praticamente inexistentes. Neste trabalho procura-se estudar as práticas das empresas no mercado de patrocínios culturais assim como investigar alguns dos resultados de ações de patrocínio de eventos culturais pela ótica da população de Porto Alegre. Através de pesquisas qualitativas (entrevistas em profundidade com empresas patrocinadoras e produtoras de eventos culturais), identificaram-se os principais objetivos e o público-alvo das empresas que patrocinam eventos culturais regularmente. Os objetivos mais importantes foram assim agrupados: (a) recall e reconhecimento das empresas patrocinadoras e suas marcas (awareness); (b) aspectos ligados à imagem das empresas patrocinadoras e suas marcas, assim como os sentimentos relacionados com o fato de empresas patrocinarem cultura e (c) preferência para comprar de empresas patrocinadoras. O público-alvo predominante foi o composto por pessoas com nível de instrução superior e/ou renda familiar mensal a partir de R$ 1.500,00 (outubro/2001). Baseado nos resultados da pesquisa qualitativa realizou-se uma survey (pesquisa de opinião) em uma amostra composta de 400 casos (público-alvo identificado na qualitativa) na qual verificou-se que os objetivos relacionados com a recall e a imagem estão sendo atingidos. A população estudada demonstrou altos índices de recall e reconhecimento das empresas e marcas patrocinadoras, assim como manifestou concordância com os critérios propostos associados à imagem e sentimentos em relação às empresas. Não se encontrou associação entre o fato de empresas patrocinarem eventos culturais e a preferência para compra ou maior compra efetiva destas empresas.

Como o marketing verde interfere na imagem da marca da indústria de celulose: o estudo de caso da aracruz celulose

The purpose of this work, is to analyze the principles underlying the pulp and paper industry, here portrayed by Aracruz Celulose S A, in the marketing standpoint, as far as it concerns being in harmony with nature and adapting its relations with the stakeholders, notably regarding the community of the State of Espírito Santo. As they form, indeed, part of the same discussion, the goal is to proceed with a detailed examination of the major aspects and conditions involved, based in its corporate communications, leading to the construction of a positive corporate brand. The results found throughout this study show that despite Aracruz and the communities¿ different goals, they converge regarding their interests towards the best practices in social and environmental practices, and a more objective communication. Industry and community can work together for a same benefit: the best relations of man towards Nature, and of man towards man. The examples here stated will endorse our perception as well as serve to evaluate the results of the measures adopted in this relationship. It could be verified how internal and external aspects of the organization influence the company¿s reputation, leading to important changes in attitude and in the production process. Pressures from stakeholders have contributed largely in helping Aracruz become more conscious of the important role it plays in the social-environmental universe of the State of Espírito Santo. The assessment of leading the process of communications within in-depth transparency have signaled that, despite a closer approach with its stakeholders, Aracruz still needs to fulfill an existing gap: an excellent rapport between the company and the communities where it influences still needs to be pursued, especially regarding communicating its activities.

Inclusão social e atividades culturais: o Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil no Rio de Janeiro

The aim of this study is to look into the benefits provided to social inclusion by cultural activities carried out in a cultural place with great seriousness at Rio de Janeiro. To accomplish that, the author attempt to deepen into the social exclusion/inclusion in brazilian urban context, spotlighting the historic reality of the urban process of the city. Afterwards, by means of a quality research, document files from the cultural spot were consulted and looked into the view of customers, trustees and managers. For customers were applied questionnaires with open and close questions, with trustees and managers were made interviews, and also a documentary research with opinions available in mass media. This study fits into public politics, cultural and institutional marketing, for presenting examples of how cultural activities are essential tools for completely social inclusion of people in community, demonstrating that often marketing enterprises in culture area can result in benefits for society, even no being these their main purposes.

Empresa e Comunidade: Responsabilidade Social, Sobrevivência, Produtividade e Imagem Institucional

Inicialmente, faz-se um convite para um passeio na história, observando-se as relações sócio-econômicas na sociedade ocidental, a partir do Império Romano até os primórdios do capitalismo, com a finalidade de identificar sob a responsabilidade de quem estava o bem-estar das comunidades, o permite registrar que essa responsabilidade foi conduzida pelas mãos da igreja, reis, confrarias e pelo Estado, e esteve sempre associada às entidades que detinham o poder. Uma vez feito isso, passa-se ao contexto atual, para entender a maneira com que o poder econômico , mais especificamente as companhias produtoras de bens e serviços, participa da responsabilidade social pelo desenvolvimento das comunidades nas quais estão situadas as unidades de produção e as conseqüências dessa participação para a imagem e sobrevivência das empresas. Finalmente, através da pesquisa de campo realizada na Refinaria de Duque de Caxias do Sistema Petrobras ¿ REDUC, examina-se na prática, a relação estabelecida entre a empresa e a comunidade local, ressaltando as motivações que levam a companhia a empreender-se socialmente, através de estratégias e planos de ação compatíveis com os interesses do seu próprio negócio.