beacuse blogdrive seems to have problems to publsih my whole paper ... here comes the rest of it ...

Index

 

1.       Introduction                                                                  2

2.         The customer reviews on Amazon.com                                               3

3.         The reviewer perspective                                                                    4

3.1.      Meanings that create a value for a community                          6

3.1.1.   Reviews as community builders                                                           6

3.1.2.   A medium for sharing experiences                                                       7

3.1.3.   Altruistic meaning                                                                               8

3.2.      Meanings with individual values                                                           9

3.2.1.   Meaning of training                                                                             9

3.2.2.   Financial and promotional meaning                                                      10

3.2.3.   Status                                                                                                 11

4.         The perspective of Amazon.com                                                         12

4.1.      Service meaning                                                                                  13

4.2.      Public relations meaning                                                                      14

4.3.      Brand loyalty                                                                                      16

5.         Conclusion                                                                                         18

6.         Bibliography                                                                                       20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.     Introduction

 

Amazon.com, one of the greatest online-retailers worldwide was founded by Jeff Bezos with the idea “[…] to make Amazon.com ‘the most customer-centric’ company in history” (Spector, 2000, p.136).  Since the enterprise was build in Seattle and started with the online-selling of books and CDs the customer-friendly idea stands in the focus of the whole organizational branding and marketing strategy of this company. On the Amazon website a lot of tools like a system of recommendations or private wish lists seek to create a sphere of a total new and completely personalized shopping experience. “Preference-matching engines are constantly gathering data about what I buy and what others buy; Amazon adds to that data preferences that I express”(Lessig, 2001, 132) is this system of described by Lawrence Lessig, who states: “But I doubt any of your friends know your tastes in music and books as well as Amazon knows mine“(Lessig, 2001, 132).

One of these options for a personal use Amazon.com offers is the possibility for customers to write own product reviews. So every registered customer of Amazon.com can write reviews about any article which can be bought via Amazon.com. Whether these are books, movies, clothes, computers or kitchen utensils, everything can be critically commented by everyone.

In this research paper I want to focus on these customer reviews and their different meanings they can have in different contexts. After describing the ‘phenomenon’ itself and how it is organized I will examine, what kind of qualities these reviews have for the people who write them. After that I will change the perspective from the customer to the organizational site of Amazon.com. I will describe what values and meanings the written reviews offer to the organizational site and how this ‘unpaid work’ of the customers can be seen in the terms of the organization and marketing context. Finally I am going to compare these two different realms of meanings of customer reviews and will try to place it in short in the general discussion of active consumer theories.

2. The customer reviews on Amazon.com

 

To every product, which can be bought on Amazon.com can be written a personal review by every customer who feels free to. The number of reviews is not limited and with this constant changing content, Amazon.com repositories attract over 14 million users every month (Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 9). At the moment Amazon.com has nearly two million volunteer reviewers,(Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 2) and except special awarded cash prizes for customer book reviews (Spector, 2000,142) the writing is completely uncompensated. Customers has to register, but can review anonymous[1], reviews are limited to 1000 words and they have to follow the editorial guidelines of Amazon.com.[2] The reviews are moderated and censored by a small group of Amazon.com-editors (Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 9) and a computer system. Beneath a textual review, customers can rate products on a five-star scale and can comment on how useful other customer reviews have been to them. Instead of giving a kind of reward (see above), Amazon honors the voluntary reviewing work through a kind of ranking, which is described by Subramani / Peddibhotla: “[…] Amazon ranks reviewers using a composite of the number of reviews submitted and the average number of helpful votes received by reviews”(Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 9).

 

 

3.     The reviewer perspective

 

This described ranking system which offers customers the possibility to describe themselves and their motivation is one of my basic sources for this chapter to describe and understand the different meanings of customer reviews. Subramani / Peddibhotla, who use the same source for their research, explain what the content of such reviewer profiles is:

 

“The profiles contained rich personal details that contributors revealed about themselves. This often included personal details such as where they lived, how old they were, details about their families and pets, descriptions of their professional careers, information on their hobbies, their interest, their passion and pet peeves, the factors motivating them to write reviews, personal life history, their favorite books and the music that they liked”(Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 9).

 

The level of information differs and some reviewers choose to stay anonymous, hidden through a nickname and an impersonal email-address.

Using this information I will try to define the meanings of these reviewers for the participating customers. I use the research Mani Subramani and Naren Peddibhotla have done, but my approach differs a little. Subramani / Peddibhotla examine in their analysis Quantity and quality: Understanding contribution of knowledge to public document repositories the motivation of users of Amazon.com to write customer reviews and seek answers to the question, what the quality of contribution drives.[3] Using this analyzed motivations my research will, in comparison to Subramani / Peddibhotla, shift the perspective and focus on the review itself. Comparable to the theory of affordances, Hutchby uses for media theory[4], I will try to describe the customer reviews as a kind of “medium” providing different meanings and values in different contexts. Leaving the personal perspective (motivation) and shifting to a model which put the object (customer reviews) in the centre and throwing light on its different meanings by changing the perspective, offers the great advantage, that these meanings are easier comparable to each other. If I concentrate on “customer reviews” the object has many facets, but remains stable, instead of focusing on motivation, which would change the whole condition of the model by shifting to other perspectives (as e.g. the company side).

As it is mentioned in the work of Subramani / Peddibhotla, the recognition of values of those public online repositories has taken place in scientific research, but there has been until now little effort to understand these motivational aspects of this phenomenon (Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 2) In the most articles about this phenomenon it is understood as an “emotional benefit” (Reimerdes, 2001, 243), gained through this form of participation. Only a few works in online-research try to describe the motives behind the participation in general. Amy Jo Kim using the offline-theories of Abraham Maslow offers in her book Community Building on the Web (2000) a general description of possible motives, which is summarized by Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman:

 

“Viewed in this context, we can assume that people are motivated to participate in order to achieve a sense of belonging to a group, to build self-esteem through contribution and to garner recognition for contributing; and to develop new skills and opportunities for ego building and self-actualization”[5]  

 

Using this bunch of motivations to understand the meanings of customer reviews leads to my two basic groups of meaning within this reviewer context: meanings that create a value for a community (e.g. writing a review to help other customers) and meaning that only has individual values for the reviewer. I hope that this basic distinction helps to define clearer the meanings of customer reviews on Amazon.com. I will start with the more obvious meanings, which includes values for users around the Net (the basic idea of the use of the Internet).

 

 

3.1.         Meanings that create a value for a community

 

3.1.1. Reviews as community builders

 

Basically, writing customer reviews brings opinions of people together, who have read the same book, listened to the same CD or watched the same film. This brings people together, who have some special interests or experiences in common and link them through a special reviewed subject.

As I can only assume, these links brings people together who would not normally search for a special community to this topic otherwise. Because of the fact, that a lot of reviewers have a broad range of interests[6], the reviews offer a link to other people around the world (in the case of Amazon.com mainly around the USA) who have joined the same product. This creates “a sense of community” (Spector, 2000, 141-142).[7] The growing content of this community of interest leads to a ‘virtuous cycle’, a kind of inner-community development, as it is described by Suresh Kotha:

 

“As this content growths, it attracts others to add to the richness of the mix, thus creating a virtuous cycle […]. In essence this is an explicit attempt to create a community around the needs for transaction” (Kotha, 1998, 217).

 

But the reviews are not only the starting point for this community of interests, this whole development is further fostered by Amazon.com through additions, described by Subramani / Peddibothla:

 

“Amazon.com allows a reviewer to develop and track a referent group by creating a ‘Favorite People’ list. When one of those people in this list writes a review or recommends something, Amazon puts it in the individual’s customized ‘Friends and Favorites’ home page. This allows the reviewer to keep track of members in his or her referent group and their opinions” (Subramani / Peddibothla, 2004, 9)[8]

 

So Amazon.com is not only an online-retailer, but also a starting point for finding the right community related to a favorite interest, or as it one reviewer literally describes: “Amazon is the true virtual book club”.[9]

 

3.1.2. A medium for sharing experiences

 

One subject closely linked to the idea of reviews as community builders is the sharing of experiences via reviews. Maybe you define this as an special point within this community-context (chapter 3.1.1), but I think this has not to be in every case, because “lurkers”, who just read without any other kind of participation can also share these experiences via reviews, although they are not a part of the community of interest.

This point of shared experiences is stressed by Amazon.com to find new participants (Gurbaxani / Shrikande, 1999, 11) and the reactions and descriptions from customers show, that this meaning of customer reviews is a strong argument for participation, e.g. as it is mentioned by reviewers: “[…] I am delighted to share what has always been a solitary experience with other people”[10], or “To know you share a love of a certain author, painter or musician is almost intoxicating at times”[11]

 

 

3.1.3. Altruistic meaning

 

Reviewing on Amazon.com is, except a few awards, a voluntary, uncompensated job (see chapter 3.2.2.). One of the key factors for describing volunteering is the term of altruism, “[…] defined as helping without expecting a direct reward” (Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 5). The motivating element behind this is empathy, which is “[…] identified as a key antecedent of the altruistic motive […] which in turns leads to helping”(Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 6).

Writing a customer review can have this altruistic quality: you can share your experiences and help in this way other customers trying to find the appropriate product. Customer reviews can highlight interesting niche products or warn customers who have wrong associations or assumptions about an article. In the self-description of the reviewers the altruistic motive is a strong one for their writing.[12] This altruistic meaning is in my definition a very wide category, because it sums up the wish to help, but also the helping quality it offers to the readers. It contains the aspect of reciprocity, too (the wish to help, after reading a helpful review), which is treated as an extra category by Subramani / Peddibhotla (Subramani/Peddibothla, 2004, 12).

 

 

 

3.2.         Meanings with individual values

 

Subramani / Peddibothla focus in their analysis on the customer’s motivation to write reviews on reasons, which can be placed in the wide realm of altruistic motives (e.g. empathy, reciprocity etc.). So it comes as no surprise that their definition of contribution focuses mainly on social characteristics, which finally produces benefits for a whole community. They state: “[…] repository contribution therefore represents uncompensated volunteering by individuals for the benefit of others” (Subramani / Peddibothla, 2004, 3).

To acknowledge this definition would neglect the fact, that customer reviews can also have three important meanings which are only valuable for the writers themselves, which I want to discuss in the following chapters.

 

 

3.2.1. Meaning of training

 

To write a review offers a kind of training qualities to the writers. As reviewers state, the writing sharpens thoughts by articulation or the limitation on 1000 words can help to sum up complicated connections.[13]

This shows “[…] that the activity of contributing a review an individual can improve one’s writing skills, organize and clarify the content of one’s thoughts about the subject, and provide an avenue for enjoyment”(Subramani / Peddibothla, 2004, 12-13). These training abilities are provided through the reviews on Amazon.com, because everybody can be a reviewer on this webpage. And in comparison to training at home for yourself Amazon-reviewers can clearly see how good their reviews are, through feedback or ranking of reviews in terms of helpfulness.

 

3.2.2. Financial and promotional meaning

 

First of all, customer reviews on amazon.com has a, although a very tiny, financial quality. Amazon.com awarded cash prizes for the best customer book reviews (Spector, 2000, 142)[14]

But more important is the promotional quality of customer reviews, which leads to a propagandistic benefit. If you look at the backgrounds of the Top 50 reviewers it is conspicuous that there are a lot of free-lance reviewers, authors, consultants or journalists. Their reviews lead to their profiles, where they promote own books or services.[15] A lot of reviewers try to put links to their own weblogs or homepages in their profiles, although it is forbidden by Amazon.com to use hyperlinks.

This promotional quality is not limited on profiles, but also the customer reviews itself are a pure medium of propaganda. Customer reviews on Amazon.com are mainly a promotion of something the author likes, and it is striking, that the five-star ranking (as the highest possible ranking) dominates the ranking practice, as it is clearly shown in the work of Admati / Pfleiderer (Admati / Pfleiderer, 2001, 1). The reviewers themselves explaining this behavior in different ways, but always with the same message.[16]

So these exclusive positive reviewing speaks also against an dominant altruistic approach, because only reviewing good things does not help other customers to protect against worse products. So this promotional meaning of customer reviews is one which shows clearly the exclusively individual value for customers for purpose of promotion or propaganda.[17]

 

 

3.2.3. Status

 

For Bowmann /Willis who  are trying to describe the possible motivations for participation in their research work of We Media, the key factor is gaining status or building reputation in a given community. This thesis is stressed by quoting Howard Rheingold (on his book Smart Mobs): “For some the ego-driven surface of this motivation is more practical underneath – people want to establish themselves as an authority on a subject”[18]

Writing an review about a special product obtains authority on this subject, because if you can review something you obviously have the quality to value. Also Subramani / Peddibhotla acknowledge this status meaning: “The possibility of recognition as a value reviewer represents the only formal incentive offered to contributors” (Subramani / Peddibhotla, 2004, 9) The status of the reviewer is strengthened through the whole reviewer ranking system Amazon describes as it follows: “The Top Reviewers list is our way of honoring the individuals whose honest, intelligent reviews help make Amazon.com a great place to shop”[19] This status meaning, as mentioned above, includes here the qualities to judge and value. Giving the customers the power to value products is according to Chris Locke (who is quoted by George N. Dafermos in his paper Blogging the market) the greatest innovation Amazon.com has brought to the Internet (Dafermos, 2003, 31).      

So if you write the first review, you simultaneously define its value and can be an opinion leader within this community of interests. These status meanings can be traced back to the comments of the Top Reviewers of Amazon.com. Writers mention the experience of rewriting something completely new and one reviewer under the nickname “Magellan” sees himself as a “true navigator through the world of knowledge”.[20]

These meaning of customer reviewers for maintaining or gaining a certain expert status highlights once again the individualistic character customer reviews can have and shows clearly the weakness of an only altruistic approach of online participation in the case of customer reviews.

 

 

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Lasica, J. (2003): Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other (Nieman Reports, Fall 2003)

 

My question: How does Lasica places the Weblogs in the great context of news and journalism? And how great is their importance?

 

Answer: Lasica sees Blogs not as a competitor to other kind of news in the realm of journalism. He stresses the point that the distinction whether they are journalism or not is not the goal of his article: “We need, then, to stop looking at this as a binary, either-ort-choice. We need to move beyond the increasingly stale debate of whether blogging is or isn’t journalism and celebrate Weblogs’ place in the media ecossystem” (p.73). This statement shows that a Lasica sees Blogs as something radically new, not simply comparable to the form of traditional journalism. It is not a new kind of journalism, but a way with a mostly non-professional background, a favour for niche-themes and written only caused by ideological and not economic reasons. So it’s nothing radical new (because they appeared a lots of independent newspapers or tv-stations  before, but new technology offers now more possibilities to spread and guarantee a greater public awareness). Lasica stresses the point that it is nothing in opposition to traditional journalism because their underlying common idea is information and they share the same “rules”: “The conventions of journalism  - accuracy, credibility, trustworthiness and being straight up with your readers – are guideposts that any good blogger engrave on her wall” (p.73). In this sense the importance of blogs is limited, they can people make aware that a lots of other stories and meanings of happenings exist outside the world of tradition journalism, but in the end they are only just one new tool in the great realm of journalism. They are an addition and at the end nothing more or less than a supplement: “Blogs won’t replace traditional news media, but they will supplement them I important ways” (p.74). 

 

 

Gillmore, Dan (2003): Moving Toward Participatory Journalism (Nieman Reports, Fall 2003)

 

My question: Gillmore in comparison to Lasica, is more enthusiastic about the importance and power of journalistic blogs in the general development of news. He sees a bright future for this new way of journalim, but what  is the weak uncertain point in his argumentation?

 

Answer: The problem I see in the vision of Gillmore is that he doesn’t take the role of the user into the account. His text is written from his point of view, as a journalist seeing the new opportunities for trustworthiness, contact to the readers and offering “forgotten” stories and approaches. As he stresses it, this model of Blogs is a new form of a more communicative way of journalism:  “In an era when the public has a pervasive distrust of journalists, listening strikes me as a good way to improve our relationship with the audience” (p.80). In the sense of Gillmore Blogs offer all these qualities, and he sketches an optimistic vision of this new kind of journalism: “I’m optimistic however, largely because the technology will be difficult to control and because people like to tell stories” (p.80). And that  is the importance and simultaneously the weakness of his whole argumentation. It’s maybe true that people like to tell stories, but do they also like to listen to stories. In this point Gillmores argumentation is only one side of the coin. Because of the existing possibilities to hear a lot of different stories and independent voices it is not automatically said that people would prefer these new form of journalism instead of tradition tv- or newspaper-journalism. To create a whole new way of journalism (and not just an supplement as stated by Lasica) people who not just write weblogs are needed, but also people who want to read all this stuff, because without a readership who accepts this it is to my mind not a new journalistic form but only a simple uncontrolled output of stories and opinions whirring through the great endless cyberspace without echoes and importance.

 

 

Middelaar, Luuk van (2003):  On Logos and Grassroots: The Anti-Globalisation Movement Between Morals, Economics and Politics

(see http://www.cne.org/pub_pdf/032003_luuk_grassroots.pdf)

 

My question: On which “levels” (argumentation, ideology, definition etc.) are laying the basic weaknesses of the anti-globalisation movement, according to van Middelaar?

 

Answer: One of the basic problems  van Middelaar sees in the whole context is the question of defining “globalisation”. This term causes a lots of problems and misunderstandings, because anti-globalisation movements don’t criticise the fact that cultural values spread across the world or boundaries disappear, but just only globalisation activities which touches economical aspects. As van Middelaar points it out, the term isn’t very well chosen and more confusing, because it contains a contradiction in itself. Without globalisational efforts (Internet, global community etc.), anti-globalisation development in this form wouldn’t exist, people wouldn’t meet and there wouldn’t exist a public awareness of organisations such as attac. This weakness is definition, which contains a contradiction causes a lot more problematic points. But focusing on just the economic side of the problems causes a lot of new problems instead. The anti-globalisation movement which criticises  capitalism and economic global influences is based on the same principles: “There is no way out of the world of money, not even for the people who think they’re fighting against it” (p.20). So the whole general argumentation against capitalistic development contains a fundamental contradiction within itself. So it came as no surprise that Klein’s book against brands paradoxically became a kind of brand itself. But the problems of this movement are not only lying on the levels of definition and ideology, but also (caused by the weaknesses on the two levels before) on the level of argumentation. Because the focus on ideology is not well chosen and full of contradictions it prevents a clear and logic argumentation, which acknowledges both sides of the problem. So, as van Middelaar points it out, the way of argumentation of the anti-globalisation approaches are always polemic and short-sighted in itself: “But all to often in ‘the Movement’ , moral indignation springing from a prima facie division in rich and poor takes place of athorough analysis of the problem” (p.36). So this weaknesses and contradictions on this three levels are the main problems of the whole development.  

 

 

 

Warde, Alan (2002): Production, consumption and ‘cultural economy’ In: du Gay, Paul / Pryke, Michael (2002): Cultural economy: Cultural analysis and commercial life. Sage Publications, London / Thousand Oaks / New Dehli, p. 185-200

 

My question: What is according to Warde the problem in reflecting the aesthetic component of consumption?

 

Answer: The aesthetic component is brought into discussion by the theory of Celia Lury in her book Consumer Culture (1996): Lury states that there are symbolic and cultural aspects of consumption which has leaded to a ‘stylization of consumption’. This aesthetic quality is of great importance for Lury’s whole understanding of consumption: “It is this, stylization and aestheticization , and not just the existence of consumer ethic or attitude, that characterizes consumer culture” (p.192). In the distinction, Warde opens up through the use of Williams threefold use of the term ‘culture’, Lury uses the third approach (culture (iii)), in the form of a cultural culture. The importance of this “cultural” influence is basically for Lury: “Thus, consumer culture is defined by aestheticization and stylization,a s generated through ‘the art-culture system’, and is illustrated by the dual movement of the increase of cultural goods produced in the economy and of economic forces operating on culture” (p.192). According to the opinion of Warde this is an overestimation of the aesthetic influence on consumption, because of two basic reasons. The first argument is, that  consumption behaviour is driven more than by just aesthetic considerations, you simply need consumption of basic goods. The second argument Warde uses is that consumption fulfils the role of work as of passive entertainment. Consumption is nothing special aesthetic: “A good deal of consumption is characterized less by its meaningfulness than by its taken-for-granted ordinariness” (p.193).

Finally Warde mentions that “aesthetic orientation is a necessary attribute of the use of cultural goods” (p.198) but there exists a underlying danger to exaggerate the importance of the component within this whole consumption context.

Tybout, A. / Carpenter, G. (2001): Creating and Managing Brands In: Iacobucci, D. (ed.) (2001): Kellog on Marketing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York

 

My question: Why does the image of the “one” universal customer not fit in the brand-model that is used by Tybout and Carpenter?

 

Answer: First of all the importance of the customer is very important if you speak about brands, whether they are national or global. The value of brands leads directly to the profits of the enterprise: “The power of brands with consumers translates directly into profits for those who own them” (p.75). The brands connect the company values and the customers: “In sum up, brands serve as a bridge between company and its customers – they are symbols of the value that the company creates” (p.101). But stressing this image there is not one bridge which guides the customer to the specific bunch of company values, but there are a wide range of bridges from different sides which offer the customer an possible approach to the product behind the brand. As Tybout and Carpenter stress in their article, there are three types of brands: the functional, image and experiential brands. Everyone has different qualities and needs special forms of advertisement and tools to maintain their brand quality. What also differs between these three types (the boundaries are blurring, so a functional brand can become a  experiential brand, as shown in  the case of Volvo) is the level of involvement of the customer. Functional brands are working with the factors of quality, price, place, service etc. which are nearly the same for every customer. If an image brand is created the involvement of the customer is needed, because if the customer doesn’t want to accept the underlying associations and images to connect them to the brand name, the brand only functions on the production level again. But the highest involvement of the customer is needed to create experiential brand, because without the participation of the customer the whole brand fails. So it comes not as a surprise, that the new medium of participation, the Internet fosters the creation and maintaining of brands such as the Star Trek experience (p.96). Tybout and Carpenter state: “Whatever the brand and product category, heavy users of it are likely to be more emotionally involved and, thereby view the brand as having more image or experiential characteristics than do light users of the brand” (p.97-98). So the brand is nothing stable, but something which differs related to the level of involvement of customers. So these fluid definition of brands is something closely related to a specific customer, not a general group or the ‘one’ customer.  

 

 

 

Dafermos, G. (2003): Blogging the Market: How Weblogs are Turning Corporate Machines into real Conversations (See: opensource.mit.edu/papers/dafermos3.pdf

 

My question: What does the mushroom growth of weblogs say about social developments in cyberspace?

 

Answer: The Internet is a space without real bodies and identities. Avatars and Nicknames offers less information about the real user you are communicating via Chat, ICQ, guestbooks etc. The development and success of personal weblogs seems to indicate that there is s kind of trend to personality. The customer reviews on Amazon.com, the discussed book-tips given by Andrew Sullivan on his weblog are given by real, existing people and not by an anonymous company or a pseudonym. That is what matters in the opinion of Dafermos: “[..] if weblogs have a true voice, they also have a chance of succeeding” (p.38). It seems to be that this development of weblogs (whether corporate or private) is the reaction on a great desire to create something like personality within this impersonal, anonymous space of the Internet. Dafermos stated this for the vase of corporate websites: “Weblogs are an attempt to break free from the dehumanised, conformant with corporate guidelines on how to address an audience PR speak”. So this seems to be one step in an development within the impersonal Internet. The first one was the use of Avatars and human-like guiding creatures, the second is the ‘personalization’ of the Internet through ‘true voices’ by real persons.

 

      

 

Nixon, Sean (2002): Re-imagining the ad-agency: the cultural connotations of economic forms In: du Gay, Paul commercial life, Sae Publications, / Pryke, Michael (ed.) (2002): Cultural economy: cultural analysis and London/Thousand Oaks/New Dehli, p.132-147

 

 

My question: Why is the small aspect of remuneration within the organisational structure of advertising industries so important for the whole argumentation of Nixon’s article?

 

Answer: Nixon sees the remuneration of financial arrangements within the advertisement industry as a key aspect, because it has a representing quality: “These financial arrangements – specifically forms of remuneration – are interesting because they have come to be seen by advertising industry insiders as carrying powerful meanings in themselves; meanings to do with the identity of advertising agencies as service providers” (p.134). They have a symbolic function for the client and play a “strategic role” (p.134) in the customer-client relation. How a company handles their remuneration arrangements represents so not only the organisational structure, but also the appreciation of the customer. As it is highlighted by Nixon, the form of remuneration defines the customer-agency relationship, which is an important factor in the advertisement market: “Competing models of remuneration were seen to carry powerful meanings about the nature of the client/agency relationship and so rethinking remuneration has itself been integral to the broader process of defining the ad agency” (p.145).

Moreover the remuneration arrangement is not only a financial act but also the symbolic combination of a cultural part (creativity) and an economic part (finance) . It deals with the question if and how creativity is measurable in an economic context, and the way how agencies use different models of remuneration shows their opinion about the culture-economy relationship.   

Unfortanetly I got a heavy bronchitis this week and so I can not hold the presentation of my research topic today (even if I could you would not understand the most of it between the coughing). So I decided to put a more detailed description of my topic on my weblog as a little compensation of my missing real presence.

Negus, Keith (2002): Identities and industries: The cultural formation of aesthetic economies In: Du Gay, Paul / Pryke, Michael (2002): Cultural economy: Cultural analysis and commercial life, Sage, London/Thousand oaks/New Dehli, p. 115-131

 

My question: What seems to be the right way for changing a corporate culture, and what problems are appearing in this case?

 

Answer: Negus offers an example within the record industry of the US, where a record label (EMI) and its executive was requested to “change the culture”.  The President and CEO Davitt Sigerson decided to fire 70 percent of the employees and to limit the roster of artist under the contract of this label  (p.125). This seems the way for changing culture, beneath marketing and organisational strategies are the people the key factor within a corporate culture process. So it seems less important to create a “new” brand or the image of it, but rather changing the inner-personal structure of the company. That is the same idea as the basic model of Scheins organisational structure, which deepest level is grounded on basic assumptions, made by the leaders of an organisation. Küng-Shankleman describes these basic assumptions: “These are the unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions and feelings about the organisation and its environment which act as the ultimate sources of values and drivers of action”. These description seems very familiar if you look, how Negus describes the music situations in the UK: “The ‘genre culture’ of British rock music had provided a particular series of orientations, assumptions, dispositions and values, and these were carried into the organizations of music production […]” (p.120) These underlying basic assumptions are the factor which drives and steers the culture of a company or a record label. But these assumptions are made by humans and their personal feelings and are not build upon pure economic facts and trends (as Negus stresses it in the case of Sigerson, p.126). These people, who, influenced by values, assumptions and taken-for-granted beliefs, are the most important but simultaneously the weakest link in the chain of corporate culture within an organisation.  So the problems which appeared in the case of EMI seemed unavoidable. Sigerson fired a lot of important people who dominated the corporate culture, but instead of a neutral factor Sigerson, himself then with his not-alone-economic assumptions and their consequences became the weakest link and was fired.

 

 

Shirky, Clay (2000): What is the P2P … And What isn’t

http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/472

 

My question: What are in the sense of Shirky the important qualities which define applications as peer-to.peer?

 

Answer: The definition, or has he says, the litmus test for finding out if something is P2P is divided into two conditions. The first, that the application mustn’t treat variable connectivity and temporary network addresses as the norm. That means that the application isn’t build up on stabile IP addresses and stable always connected servers and computers and accept this sort of “unreliability” within its system. The second condition includes the possibility of  giving the nodes (users) at the edges significant autonomy within this system, for example in the case of Napster where everybody is allowed to search other peoples directories and use their storage. The definition, Shirky gives is one which is not involved in the question of server-based applications. If a great server (as in the case of Napster) is used is not the point, but important in the sense of Shirky how this system is used, if there exist central power resources (Yahoo) and under which conditions it functions. This makes the difference in being a P2P system or not.

 

 

Rutherford, Emilie (2000) The P2P Report

http://www.cio.com/research/knowledge/edit/p2p_content.html

 

I found it hard to find critical questions for a small text (four pages) which offers pure facts and is written without offering any theories and seems to be written for possible customers within this realm. The only possibly questionable distinction Rutherford made is in the case of flavors between collaborative computing, instant messaging and affinity communities, but this seems totally clear in my opinion. So I can’t offer any questions or answers.

 

 

Wellman, Barry / Boase, Jeffrey (2001): A Plague of Viruses: Biological, Computer and Marketing (Current Sociology, draft)

 

 My question: Why have the “brokers” in the model of Wellmann & Boase such a great importance?

 

Answer: What all kinds of viruses need in the network models of Wellmann & Boase are possibilities to spread. In a densely knit group everybody helps to spread the virus because of the dense contact-behaviour. In a ramified network there is not a such closeness and there are a lot of gaps and structural holes were a spreading process can be stopped. People who fill this gap are so called “brokers”: “These key gatekeepers and brokers are the means by which avirus  spreads out through ramified networks” (p.8). With the help of the broker, a virus can travel between groups ans spread out through ramified networks. This person, the broker is important for biological and  computer viruses and also viral marketing, because every form of a virus needs hosts whio have access to different groups to accelerate the transgression.

This all looks nice in this stereotyped model of densely knit and ramified networks but as they mention the reality offers less of such typical network systems: “The actual world is a combination of both forms of networks. […] People and their computers often belong to densely knit networks while at the same time maintaining ramified ties” (p.11). Wellmann / Boase call this mixture-system of local and global connection “glocalization”. And this “realistic” model makes the role of brokers problematic, because in such a system, where everybody has local and widespread connections (especially via email) everybody is also a broker (with access to both kind of network-types). If everyone is a broker the whole theory about the importance of such brokers seems to be frail, and with that the whole model seems to fail in this glocalization-network.    

A few days ago the first virtual church in UK can be visited. It's a project of the Methodistic church which si called "church of fools" for as they stated "people on the edge of faith". You can pray, chat and do a lot of other strange things in this virtual church (including advertisement). But as I noticed in a German magazine soon after the start they were getting into  a lot of problems.
Strange things happen on the Net ;-)

Harries, Dan (2002) Watching the Internet In: Harries, Dan (2002) The New Media Book, BFI, London

 

My question: Harries describes a new way of participating within the Internet at the entertainment level, a hybrid mode of viewing and using, called „viewsing“. But how clear is the definition Harries offers and what are the natural limitations of this new participation form?

 

Answer:  The definition Harries offers at the beginning is still a little blurred: “I call this third emerging mode of spectatorship ‘viewsing’ – the experience of media in a manner that  effectively integrates the activities of both viewing and using, such as participating in a real time online poll that directly affects a live video feed” (p.172). “Viewser” in the sense of Harries are so modern  new “connected consumers” (p.172) enjoining a new made area for multitasking entertainment facilities. The further distinctions between using and viewing are perfectly clear: using as form of interactivity which creates as the examples of the online quiz-shows a constant experience of a limited range of interaction without an immersion in special programme and viewing as the pure act of consuming livestreams or other audio-visual material which is brought to the Internet. Bringing this separated forms together seems to my mind the creative but also critical point of his definition. Harries does not mean the mixture of playing an online movie and scrolling through a text at the same time (p.175). His description of a “viewsing” highlights the aspect of the mutual influence of this different qualities by mentioning Manovich’s concept of ‘cognitive multitasking’. These new interactivity is not also a new approach of joining the Internet but also a whole new experience, as it Harries figures out: “In other words, viewsing becomes the true manifestation of multimedia spectatorship and offers media an interesting and engaging interactive experience” (p.180) And this is in my opinion the problematic point in his theory. This new viewsing experience is described as a new method, a new phenomenon, a whole new experience which might be the future of Internet activities. To my mind this new approach is only a special case of the using/interactivity-side and not a new form itself, because the realm of possibilities are so limited. The examples Harries uses (de Bus, Big Brother and The Runner) are three examples of one special television genre, which deals with gaming and live surveillance. This new form of live-“docutainment” (does this word also exist in English) is limited to a small category of tv-formats, and only for this limited area the model of Harries seems to fit. This is in my opinion not enough to speak about viewsing compared to the models of using and viewing as an independent new approach.   

 

 

Benkler, Yochai (2000): From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation toward Sustainable Commons and User Access

(www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v52/no3/benkler1.pdf)

 

My question: What seems to be the general underlying problem in the relation of structural media regulation and the new digitally network environment?

 

Answer: The general underlying problem of this case is independent of the levels of  informational structure. Benkler speaks about the three layers of informational environment (the physical, logical and content layer), but the general problematic aspect lays deeper in this context. This main problem is the distribution of power within this great complex, what is simultaneous the same problem of the first amendment, which palys an important role in the argumentation of Benkler. So he says: “These cases [United States vs. Associated Press etc, J.H.T.]  represent a central problem of the first amendment law. […] the problem arises from the technological and economic fact that different people and organizations  in society have very different power to affect the flow of information in society” (p.565). These powerful ruling institutions are either enterprises like AOLTimeWarner or also courts and the government itself. So politicians and judges who create laws to ensure a decentralization and a “free” Internet are reaching the total opposite by using their power to change the possibilities theses free cyberspace originally offers. This case might happen as Benkler remarks on page 566: “The problem is that government might use its power to suppress speech it disagrees with under the guise of regulation to enhance freedom of speech, and that government would get too comfortable with the idea of regulating communications markets and regulate well beyond what is necessary to assure robust, open discourse” (p.566). And this different possibilities of power (through laws and acts) offers the whole development of reproductioning the producer-consumer relationship within the three different layers which  caused all the problems Benkler describes. But as I said before, these are only the results, the main problem lays much deeper.

 

 

Lessig. L. (2001): Innovation from the Internet In: Lessig, L. (2001): The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the House of Commons in a Connected World. Random House, New York       

 

My question: What makes the Internet and it’s structure so special in comparison to other media?

 

Answer: The Internet offers a whole new bunch of possible opportunities in the way it could be used or as Hutchby would have said with its communicative affordances. As Lawrence Lessig stresses it a few times the Internet is understandable as a medium whose architecture was not given by itself. The “architecture”, described as the modes it was and is used may change, it offers unlimited space and simultaneously creates barriers as shown in the cases of Napster. But this architecture is man-made, according to Lessig, “But cyberspace at its birth did have a certain character” (p.121). A character that disabled any mean of controlling the communicating ends in a principle of “end-to-end” (p.121).

This end-to-end principle which offers any member within this media realm to participate shows the general basic idea which came up by the invention of every new medium. At the beginning in the case of every medium it was thought about using it as a way of a global communication and participation channel (for example in the case of the telephone, telegraph, television etc.). Also the radio was at the beginning seen as possible medium of both transmitter AND receiver. This idea was e.g. brought into discussion by Bertolt Brecht in his famous article about the new qualities of the radio.

These general possibility which is discussed for every medium is now reached with the Internet. This end-to-end quality, every consumer also a “producer” is the underlying idea of the whole “peer-to-peer” discussion and this general discussion of Lessig about the architecture of the Internet.   


The last question and answer will come tomorrow morning

I've seen the whole episode yesterday and I'm still really impressed. I think this is one of the best examples for the right concept of a programme with the best chosen "persona" in an appropriate cultural context at the right time. Great!
If you are interested in an reaction of an intellectual American and his feelings about "The Apprentice" look at this. Very interisting is also how the slogan of Trump is "used" into the context of the US election ;-)

Nixon, Sean (2003): Advertising and Commercial Culture In: Nixon, Sean (2003) Advertising Cultures. Sage, London

 

My question: What is the key aspect that distinguishes Nixons concept of  ‘commercial culture’ from the other theories (Lash/Urry, Scase/Davis, Featherstone etc.) he mentions in his article?

 

Answer: To answer this question the kind of definition Nixon gives at the beginning is very important. “The idea of ‘commercial culture’ also insists on the importance of grasping the generative relations with wider economic, political and cultural formations into which commercial processes are drawn with particular  historical settings” (p.2?) Nixon relates commercial culture to a specific given framework within particular historical settings. In other words time, place and all circumstances together build this kind of idea which is called ‘commercial culture’ (which can be compared to the theory of large technological systems of Thomas P. Hughes which also needs special conditions of time and place to start and foster special inventions and their further development steps).

Nixons theory isn’t linked to special situations, but refers to a framework of conditions, which distinguishes his theory from the others. Lash and Urry’s idea about reflexive organisation is caused by terms of Fordism and Post-Fordism which follows the same epochal model of change that Nixon refuses. Also the model of Scase / Davis about the coming of an information society and their four ideal types of organisations leads to a “dualistic model of cultural change” (p.10?) as Thomas Osborne mentions. And the theory of “new cultural intermediaries” mentioned by Mike Featherstone (who uses mainly the work of Bourdieu) causes a time problem. The epithet “new” throws up automatically the question of periodisation (because where something is new, there must have been something old) which leads also to a  establishing of this theory within a special timeframe. This problematic point can also be found in the consumption history studied by McKendrick.

The first theory which is mentioned, which shares the ideas of Nixons thesis is the theory of Frank Mort. Here Nixon stresses again his main point, the quality which is characteristic for his approach. Commercial culture must be viewed as a discrete object of study which stresses once again “[…] the importance of attending to particular forms taken by commercial endeavour at specific times and in specific places”(p.18?)    

 

 

Küng-Shankleman, L.(2000): What is organisation culture? In: Küng-Shankleman, L. (2000): Inside the BBC and CNN: Managing Media Organizations. Routledge, London

 

My questions: Why is culture a fluid term in the opinion of Küng-Shankleman? And what for problems causes this fluid behaviour in the organisational context?

 

Answer: The whole argumentation of this chapter by Küng-Shankleman is mainly based on the concept of Schein (1996), which describes culture as “nothing more than  the accumulated learning shared by a set of members of an organisation” (p.9). Learning founds here on three cultural levels with basic assumptions as the starting level. Something based on assumptions stands naturally not on a solid ground and is influenced by different realms. In the case of organisational cultures are the influences Schein mentions the influence of the national culture, the (powerful) role of the founder and environmental influences. All together create the basic assumptions which are finally responsible for the whole organisation culture. Based on such a fluid ground, because environmental and cultural influences are changing all the time, Küng-Shankleman acknowledges that “Culture may be difficult to change but is not static” (p.12). So it is both something stabile (the chosen organisation culture, the brand) and something fluid (the assumptions, environment, consumers etc.). So culture in this context is both, as Küng-Shankleman mentions, product and process (p.12).

This ambiguous character is a problematic one, because everything within this organisational context and finally the product is linked to the cultural realm. As The author remarks mission, strategies and competencies are linked to the cultural background, which is not stable predictable. So the close relationship to the fluid cultural term makes the whole construct vulnerable. If the environment with all its cultural meanings and values changes, strategies and competencies (based on former assumptions) can maybe become worthless.

 

 

 

De Mooij, M. (1998): Dimensions of Culture In: De Mooij, M. (1998): Global marketing and Advertising. Sage, London

 

First of all this whole model De Mooij sketches seems very clear and logical. But without knowing the exact data (e.g. in the mentioned ESM report) and without knowing enough about the cultural backgrounds of North-American or Asian culture it is impossible to me to see how right these assumptions about general cultural types and behaviours are. So my question focuses on the European area, which is an area I know a little about.

 

My question: Is a general differentiation between European countries not to superficial to describe such a specific term as culture?

 

I think the dimension model of Hofstede de Mooij uses to build categories in cultural differences reaches not far enough if you want to use it for promotional matters. I think in a period of globalisation and migration, especially in Europe, you can’t describe cultural distinctions parallel to the boundaries of the countries. Or in a melting pot as the United States you can’t use one national “scheme” to describe the culture of the whole great country, without ignoring all the immigrants and influences from South America, Europe or Asia. The same happens in the whole European community and so the systematic use of descriptions as “the Germans” “the Dutch” etc. seems to me problematic, because behaviours and cultural values can extremely differ within a country. De Mooij self mentions that there can be different positions within a country in the case of IBM studies in Italy: “In Italy, the IBM data used by Hofstede were collected in the North, where people appaered to be highly individualistic. Other studies and my own observation of Italian television advertising indicate that the Italians as a whole are much more collectivistic” (p.79). So the author mentions this problematic point, but seems to ignore it. If you look at Spain, the Basques and Catalans have created over ages special regional identities which differs from the stated national identity, the same happened in Germany, where the reunion of West- and East-Germany didn’t lead to one common identity but still to different cultural identities and behaviours. Also the increasing number of immigrants which keep their original cultural identity without any assimilation with their new home-country makes it to my mind difficult to speak about identity in terms of countries.

 

 

McRobbie, Angela (2002): From Holloway to Hollywood: Happiness at work in the new cultural economy? In: Du Gay, Paul / Pryke, Michael (2002): Cultural economy: Cultural analysis and commercial life, Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/New Dehli

 

My question: What is the most problematic point in a general description and definition of “working culture”?  

 

Answer: McRobbie mentions three key features related to the recent debate about work. These are ‘youth’, ‘permanently transitional work’ and ‘creativity’ (p.98). The first two features are closely linked to the question of age, which all its consequences (constitution, family, willing to spatial movements,  financial compulsions etc.) So in my opinion age is the “fluid” term which makes is very hard to give a general definition of actual working situations. You can see this critical factor mainly in the works of Sennett and Leadbeater. Sennett in his analyse of American workers focuses only of older people, which has a lot of problems within the new flexible economy. Leadbaetaer describing the success-stories of young dynamic selfmade-men and women shows the completely other side of this problem, by focusing only on the younger workers as McRobbie mentions “He is uncritical of the limitations of the new meritocracy and unconcerned by those hard workers in the new cultural economy who, despite great effort and some degree of success, have still only got midway up the ladder of mobility by the age of 40” (p.108).

McRobbie herself stresses this problematic age-factor within her studies by saying “Independent creative work is thus transitional in terms of lifecycle, with high levels of investment in the early years following the completion of education or training” (p.110).

The consequence of a situation of working culture, where the key features are closely linked to the term of age is clear: you can’t describe the general situation without ignoring this important age-distinction, so definitions of working situations must be separated into realms of different lifecycles.