The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a growing interest in America's folk heritage, as Americans began to enthusiastically collect, present, market, and consume the nation's folk traditions. Examining one of this century's most prominent "folk revivals--the reemergence of Southern Appalachian handicraft traditions in the 1930s--Jane Becker unravels the cultural politics that bound together a complex network of producers, reformers, government officials, industries, museums, urban markets, and consumers, all of whom helped to redefine Appalachian craft production in the context of a national cultural identity. Becker uses this craft revival as a way of exploring the construction of the cultural categories "folk" and "tradition." She also addresses the consequences such labels have had on the people to whom they have been assigned. Though the revival of domestic arts in the Southern Appalachians reflected an attempt to aid the people of an impoverished region, she says, as well as a desire to recapture an important part of the nation's folk heritage, in reality the new craft production owed less to tradition than to middle-class tastes and consumer culture--forces that obscured the techniques used by mountain laborers and the conditions in which they worked.

Surveys the new practices of advertising, mass distribution of goods, and the birth of the inexpensive mass-audience magazine at the end of the 19th century, and their role in the creation of the American professional-managerial class. Focuses on magazine publishing, careers of key personalities in the publishing world, and the role of fiction in the magazines. For students and general readers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An inside look at cultural industries, featuring interviews with key players from such companies as Twentiety-Century Fox, National Public Radio, and Coca-Cola. To what extent do moviemakers, television and radio producers, advertising executives, and marketers merely reflect trends, beliefs, and desires that already exist in our culture, and to what extent do they consciously shape our culture to their own ends? In-depth interviews with ten executives from the "culture industry" and five scholarly analyses examine that question, and address the issues of power and authority, meaning and identity, that arise when cultural producers define and react to audiences. In their own words, leaders from companies like Twentieth-Century Fox, National Public Radio, and Warner Bros. Television describe their perception of the sometimes paradoxical relationship between culture and what influences it. For example, while the former president of Coca-Cola North America claims the company has never tried to create a trend, he notes that "we market in more countries than belong to the United Nations [a product that] has insinuated itself into the lives of the people to a point where it has become-you know, it's there." These reflections by key players provide an unprecedented view, as editor Richard Ohmann writes, "into the ways cultural producers imagine or know markets and how such knowledge figures in their decisions about what events, experiences, and products to make."

This book aims to be what every marketing manager needs to know about marketing in today?s competitive markets. The idea was born out of repeated comments from IMD clients that there were gaps in the ?classic? literature where innovations in practice had moved ahead of the discipline at an academic level. Each chapter takes a subject that can be defined as being new or relatively new (for instance value chain marketing, marketing through collaboration with customers, and two-way brand building) and illustrates how new thinking has led to innovations in practice. The book is full of examples of real-world companies who have dealt effectively with the emerging issues, and others who have not. Each chapter ends with managerial highlights and actionable summaries.

Divergence: A Source of Creative Thinking The outstanding job accomplished by Bernard, Gary, and Gilles is really praiseworthy: not only did they succeed in completing within a remark ably short span of time the editing of the contributions to the conference that marked the 20th Anniversary of the European Institute for Ad vanced Studies in Management; they have also managed to elicit numerous insightful comments from a host of dashing young scholars as well as from the fortunate few established authorities whose findings have long be come leading articles in the best academic journals, who now chair those journals' editorial boards, and after whom great scientific awards have been named. In so doing, our dedicated triumvirate has blended together pieces of diverse research traditions-some of them quite puzzling-and mixed significantly differentiated styles of expression. The controversial display of self-confidence by some distinguished colleagues, the amazingly emo tional "good old" memories revived by their peers, the scapegoat-finding and moralizing confessions produced by some of their disciples together with the detached systematic rigidity of some others all combine to pro duce a multivarious patchwork that may well prove the existence of a marketing scholar lifecycle. This cartoon-like four-class typology might even make it worth the reader's while to indulge in some guesswork to discover the sequence of the four stages as an exercise and then partition the author population accordingly.

Rabbinic tradition is in large part a tradition of law and jurisprudence. This tradition of law comprehends fields as diverse as the law of evidence and the dietary regimen, as laws on credit and debt and the laws of ritual purity. It follows naturally that many, if not most, of the great works of rabbinical literature are law books, commentaries on the law, and collections of cases. The principal legal code, or restatement, still authoritative among traditional Jews, is the Shulhan Arukh, compiled by Joseph b. Ephraim Karo of Safed (1488-1575) and glossed by Moses Isserles of Cracow (1520-1572). This work, published in four volumes, provided the rabbinic jurist or magistrate, as well as the learned layman, with a concise review of the various areas of Jewish law that might come to his attention. One such area of traditional Jewish law was the laws of buying and selling and the laws of fraud in sales. This particular domain within traditional Jewish commercial law is surprisingly intelligible and fascinating for modern students of Jewish tradition. Buying and selling are just as much a part of the modern world as they were of past ages. Moreover, the student of legal history or comparative law will find that this rabbinical code on sales and fraud in sales provides, at a glance, a view of the strata of Jewish legal development from the ancient period to the sixteenth century. Among the matters treated in this code are the formation of the agreement to buy and sell, the concept of acquisition as it relates to various types of property, legal capacity, and the requirement of good faith. The chapters on fraud reflect the moral and ethical values of Jewish tradition which are always implicit, and often explicit, in the rules of Jewish civil, criminal, and commercial legal codes. The material is clearly of interest to modern students of business ethics. A synopsis of the law of sale prefaces the work. It underscores some of the main features of this area of the law and furnishes some terminology and analysis of the material. While this synopsis does note some points of contrast and comparison with Roman law and medieval church law, it is not intended as a detailed historical or comparative study. It serves principally to introduce the text itself and establish some useful lines of understanding and classification. The translation of the laws of sale and fraud presented here has been prepared with the utmost care and attention to the technical nuances of legal terminology in both modern and ancient law. Its apparatus of notes and references includes material on the history of the printing of this translated portion of the Jewish legal tradition.

There is possibly no other company which is so casual and at the same time so powerful as the computer and entertainment manufacturer Apple. The company controls the online-music market, the market for portable music players and is now capturing the high-tech mobile phone market. Apple moves into new electronic markets with strong competitors, in order to monopolise them just a short time later. The CEO, Steve Jobs, has brought a brand into being that is different and at the same time mainstream. A strong magnetic brand which yields more influence in people’s life than one would care to admit. This is absolutely the reason why every company in the world wishes for a strong magnetic brand which can be defined as a “CULT BRAND”. They get repeatedly chosen over the competition. They bring higher prices than the competition. And if they are a strong enough brand their customers not only use their products, but evangelize them to the world. This project aims to analyze Apple’s marketing activities in order to figure out, what makes this company so successful. It adds to the traditional marketing theory, the new theory of “cult marketing” because traditional marketing delivers no approach to explain the behavior of cult brands. The phenomena of a Cult Brand are comparable to the patterns of a religion and Apple as well has strong believers. When it comes to their favorite brand, they enjoy telling who ever will listen how great it is and why they love it so much. People are camping in front of Apple’s stores just to get their latest innovative product. And if their Messiah, Steve Jobs, enters the stage to introduce a new product to thousands of viewers, he brings the house down. This book discusses Apple‘s unique Marketing Strategy and delivers a guidline on the Example of Apple of the needed conditions to convert an ordinary brand into a „CULT BRAND“.

This book offers a cultural studies approach to marketing and advertising and shows readers how scholars from different academic disciplines make sense of marketing’s role in American culture and society. It is written in an accessible style and has numerous drawings by the author to give it more visual interest.

The dramatic increase in global trade confronts service firms with the challenge of adapting their services to the varying requirements of customers in different cultures. Jan H. Schumann focuses on three relationship marketing issues that are of relevance for both academics and practitioners: the establishment of trusting customer relationships, customer co-production, and the effect of word-of-mouth referrals.