Thomas O'Guinn

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · School of Business

American beliefs about social class are not always accurate. Up to half of Americans claim to belong to the middle class, and many believe in an egalitarian society where social mobility is possible. These misperceptions have been attributed, in part, to the mass media. This work sets out to explore whether images of and messages about social class...

This paper is about social space and material objects for sale within that space. We draw primarily on Goffman's (1971) concepts of use space and possession territories to predict that as the social density of a given space increases, inferences of the subjective social class and income of people in that space fall. Eight studies confirm that this...

This article provides a review of the advertising effects literature. It begins by putting forward three reasons why so little knowledge about the effects of advertising exists. They are: an anticommercial bias, the inherent difficulties presented by the object of study itself, and inadequate methods. Effects at the economic, sociocultural, and ind...

Previous work has demonstrated that the use of white space in advertising communicates specific meanings to consumers and that this meaning derives from particular historical moments in the art and visual rhetoric of 20th-century North America. The use of “empty space” in ads, however, can also be conceptualized as a signal of burning money, which...

Conducted interviews with 993 Mexican-Americans regarding media use, language preference, and consumption measures to extend the findings of the 1st 2 authors (1984) on the use of Spanish-language broadcasting. Discriminant analysis was used to produce a profile of Mexican-Americans who prefer Spanish-language over English-language TV. A comparison...

The authors investigate brand advertising as an instrument of class politics, used to shape perceptions of and beliefs about social groups, specifically the working class. These images are consistent with the prescriptions of capitalist realism. The authors content-analyze representations of the working class drawn from a random sample of ads from...

The use of product placement has grown rapidly in recent years. While technology has made it easier for viewers to avoid watching traditional television commercials, embedding products within entertainment offers a means by which marketers can reach their audiences. Though research has examined the executional factors that make product placement mo...

This investigation assessed Mexican-American and Anglo wives' perceptions of family decisionmaking roles for the purchase of eight different goods and services. This comparison was used to explore the impact ethnic subculture plays in consumer behavior. The findings indicate that ethnicity significantly affects wives' perceptions of family decision...

This investigation examined the relationship between subcultural group membership and the importance of various product attributes in purchase decisions. Subcultural group membership was defined on the basis of Hispanic ethnicity and level of assessed acculturation. The results indicate that cost considerations such as price and the availability of...

We seek to advance visual theory in the domain of commercial rhetoric (advertising) by demonstrating how objects and symbols derive meaning from their histories. We do this by examining a single visual trope common in advertising, white space. The choice of white space was purposeful in that it is not a picture and its history is both accessible an...

This article introduces the idea of brand community. A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Grounded in both classic and contemporary sociology and consumer behavior, this article uses ethnographic and computer mediated environment data to expl...

This article introduces the idea of brand community. A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Grounded in both classic and contemporary sociology and consumer behavior, this article uses ethnographic and computer mediated environment data to expl...

Two studies investigated the extent to which heavy television viewing affects consumers perceptions of social reality and the cognitive processes that underlie these effects. Both studies found evidence heavy viewers beliefs about social reality are more consistent with the content of television programming than are those of light viewers. The use...

In the last several years, the increased diffusion of computer andtelecommunications technologies in businesses and homes has produced newways for organizations to connect with their customers. These computermediated environments (CMEs) such as the World Wide Web raise new researchquestions. In this paper, we examine the potential research issuesas...

This article presents the results of a two-study inquiry into a particular type of consumer socialization: the construction of consumer social reality via exposure to television. In study 1, estimates of the prevalence of products and activities associated with an affluent lifestyle were positively related to the total amount of television responde...

Advancements in understanding problematic behaviors require the ability to identify affected or at-risk individuals. This article reports the development of a scale to identify compulsive buyers. Seven items representing specific behaviors, motivations, and feelings associated with buying significantly contributed to correctly classifying approxima...

Compulsive buying is framed within the larger category of compulsive consumption, and both quantitative and qualitative data are used to provide a phenomenological description. Results indicate people who buy compulsively are more likely to demonstrate compulsivity as a personality trait, have lower self-esteem, and are more prone to fantasy than m...

Heritage Village, home of the PTL ministry, is the focus for a study of consumer behavior involving an explicit synthesis of worship and shopping. The present investigation seeks to better understand the way these pursuits, seemingly philosophically opposed, are brought together for joint consumption. Notions of pilgrimage and sacralization of the...

This paper presents evidence of a type of consumption which can be called “compulsive.” It further demonstrates that this type of consumption is related to certain aspects of materialism, but not possessiveness. This suggests that the actual consumption experience may possess aspects akin to those observed in other abusive behaviors, but may be ess...

Recent research has begun to recognize the role that mass media plays in acculturation. Equally important, however, may be the media's ability to influence the host society's perception of ethnic group members. Misperceptions by either group may inhibit or halt the acculturation and assimilation processes. As a first step to determine the degree of...

The present study hypothesized that the media use and preference of ethnic minorities may not be due solely to language ability or level of acculturation, but rather may be role specific. Individuals assume several different roles in the course of the average day and media use may reflect the expectations associated with these roles. It was further...

Subcultural differences can influence peoples' perceptions of the importance of various product attributes. In turn, these perceptual differences can affect advertising response. Interviews with 310 Hispanic and Anglo consumers were conducted to determine whether they differed in their ratings of the importance of different product attributes. Hisp...

Concludes that frequent movie goers use previews more than any other information source as the basis of their selections. (FL)

Traducción de: Advertising Obra que plantea que la publicidad debe ser un trabajo creativo y divertido, a la vez que debe ser de calidad, con una planeación cuidadosa, por lo que supone una ardua labor. A lo largo del libro se analiza la publicidad como parte de la compleja comunicación humana y del comportamiento del consumidor; presenta también l...

Traducción de: Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion Obra que plantea que la publicidad debe ser un trabajo creativo y divertido, a la vez que debe ser de calidad, con una planeación cuidadosa, por lo que supone una ardua labor. A lo largo del libro se analiza la publicidad como parte de la compleja comunicación humana y del comportamiento del...

El texto presenta el proceso publicitario, la planeación de la publicidad (estructura de la industria publicitaria), la preparación del mensaje publicitario (evolución) y la colocación del mensaje publicitario(aspectos sociales, éticos y de reglamentación de la publicidad). El estudiante finalmente obtiene tanto los puntos de vista de los clientes...