Imagining Identity: Technology and the Body in Marketing Communications

This paper investigates how marketing communications represent information technologies in increasingly corporeal ways, infusing their materiality with anthropomorphous, cyborg and perhaps posthuman qualities of body and soul. The human body and how it functions to represent technology within marketing communications is a central concern. Building upon cultural approaches to marketing communication, we analyze a cross section of ads, including campaigns from Ericsson, Sony and Telia, via critical visual analysis in conjunction with consumer response. Results and discussion focus on how images of the cyborg body create brand meaning and value, signaling shifting theoretical implications for consumer research.

Citation:

Jonathan Schroeder and Peter Dobers (2007) ,"Imagining Identity: Technology and the Body in Marketing Communications", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34, eds. Gavan Fitzsimons and Vicki Morwitz, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 229-232.