Cross-Cultural Blog

Jennifer Lee
Research topic: The ideal dancer body and its role in the dance industry

I’m interested in how the “ideal dancer body” has evolved. I’m curious as to why this body type is favored and so highly regarded in performance arts. I also want to research the consequences of commercializing this ideal body such as eating disorders or discrimination in auditions.

Possible sources:
1. Biography of a dancers
2. Articles on the scandals in the dance world or eating disorders
3. Movie: Center Stage

Some worries I have include not focusing my ideas. I think it would be hard to develop a thesis. Also, trying to find articles for research may be difficult.

Image of principle dancer, Sylvie Guillem, in Swan Lake performance:
http://www.cafeblo.com/madamej/img/509/p44sylvie_guillem2.jpg

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Arsani William
Campaigns: The Consumer Culture of Political Elections

In my research paper, I will be discussing how campaigns have evolved over time, since the crucial 1970 JFK election, to cinlude more style than substance. Nevertheless, it is an appeal to the political 'consumer' that ttracts vots. The recent campaign to win the Democratic nomination elicits a unique example, in that both a black candidate as well as a women candidate are battling each other to become the potential president. Appearances, words, campaign tactics, style, rhetoric, tv spots, ads... are all mechanisms these candidates use to appeal to their audience. By research attempts to answer 3 primary questions: 1) To What extend do these candidates attempt to appeal to their ocnsumers. By answering this question, we will delve into the monetary expenses of a campaign as well as the different types of appeals each mechanism discussed above includes.2) How effective are these apeals in eliciting the response the candidates look over 3) is there such thing as an over-appeal?

This current democratic election for the nomination will be a hotly discussed topic in the paper. As such, I have decided to include a visual of Obama's Yes we Can Video. I would recommnd everyone to see it, but try to look at it as an attempt to appeal to a mass viewership audience, despite your profession, despite their income, despite health problems... The message is tha Obama will fix it all. http://www.salem-news.com/stimg/february042008/obama_vid.jpg

To watch the full video, just type in "yes we can- obama" in youtube.

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 08:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Name: Charlton Soesanto
Research Topic: The process of a dinky show like Star Trek into a massive cult-ish following in which people know more about this fake world than the real one.

I hope to find out answers to questions such as "What specifically about Star Trek appeals to some people and repels some people?" Also, at what point does a TV show realize that it is becoming a cultish phenomenon, and how does this following incite further cultish behavior? Is there something more to Star Trek than just a bunch of made-up characters in a futuristic world that has created this following? Does perhaps Star Trek hit on a lot of the same appeals that modern day evangelical religious appeals do?

Some resources I could use are books regarding cults, commentaries on the integration of pop culture and fads, the interest in a science fiction "unreal" world, DVDs videos and other showings of the progression of the first season of Star Trek to later ones.

I worry that because Star Trek has so many seasons, it will be difficult for me to write about them all.

Continue reading "Charlton's "Creative Research Prep"" »

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 02:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1972, a marketing professor named Richard Krachenberg flatly stated, “No matter what it is called, who does it, or where in the institution it is being done, universities are engaging in marketing.” A lot of times what colleges call recruiting is just a euphemism for advertising. As a consumer of this college market, I am interested in studying how higher education functions as a market, focusing primarily on marketing to undergraduates. Everyone would agree that the more highly regarded the institution, the more top students and prized professors it attracts and the more readily it can secure the biggest gifts and largest research grants. I am interested in these possible topics:

1. Private schools vs Public schools
2. School branding and brand loyalty
3. How colleges use technology (internet, websites, blogs) as well as carefully crafted brochures with photos showing gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity to appeal to students
4. The influence of rankings
I think that understanding the ways in which colleges market themselves is especially interesting because it is an enormous and lucrative market that affects all of us.

I plan to look at past and current editions of U.S. News &World Report’s annual survey of “America’s Best Colleges” as well as many books such as The Uses of Institutional Culture : Strengthening Identification and Building Brand Equity in Higher Education and Higher education as competitive enterprise : when markets matter.

The only worries I have are that I don’t yet have a single idea that I want to focus on. I think I want to first read some material and then decide where to concentrate most of my research .

Here is an image of tons of advertising done by colleges and represents the kind of material high school seniors get bombarded with:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/207/488558336_17425b8f22.jpg?v=1178560002

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 02:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Nadine Ghosn
Topic: The pressure faced by women in society to meet an unrealistic body image. I will focus on where this pressure originates from and what are the consequences to women.
Sources i will be using are:
Vintage and recent vogue magazines. I will also include other image that can be found in other magazines that might relate to me topic.
Articles on the two Brazilian models who died of Aneroxia and the BMI laws that were established after this sad incidence.
Music-how the pressure is referred to in some songs.
Focus on websites with Stars and their eating habbits. What is considered fat in hollywood vs what is considered to be the healthy weight by normal women depending on their size.
Celebrities: Victoria Beckham, Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse and Eva Longoria.
Maybe include a little bit of information from proanorexic websites.
Difficulties faced in this research:
Such a broad topic so many things i would like to include in this paper and there are so many sources out there therefore it will be difficult to focus my paper because there is so much i would like to include.
Image found on Google.
It is off Twiggy the model who was claimed to be the one to have started this whole stick figure body image.
http://drx.typepad.com/psychotherapyblog/images/2007/08/22/twiggy.jpg

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alex Kaplan
Research Topic: Advertising in women’s magazines and its impact on body image

I am interested in researching how advertisements featured in popular women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour affect women’s body image and can lead to negative consequences such as unrealistic standards and body dissatisfaction. I would also like to find out how the ads used in these magazines have shaped people’s perception of what is “beautiful” and how the definition of beauty has changed over the years, especially with the current rise in the popularity of ethnically diverse models.

Some possible sources include:
1. Both past and current issues of women’s magazines
2. Books on advertising and marketing to women
3. Journal articles on the ways in which advertisements affect women
4. Statistical data on the rates of women undergoing plastic surgery and with eating disorders
5. Psych studies related to my topic

I am a little worried about my topic being too broad, but hopefully I will be able to narrow it down once I start to conduct research and find what about this issue interests me most. I am also worried about making sure that I relate everything back to consumer culture.

Here is a link to a Dove ad: http://francisanderson.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/dove_wideweb__430x327.jpg.
Dove has created an advertising campaign that features “real women” and is a backlash to the unrealistic standards portrayed by flawless models used by other companies.

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Peter Smillie
Popular music

I want to research popular music, probably some subgenre thereof, and the initial questions that I set out with are as follows:

What are the factors that determine if a song or a band will become popular?
How does this vary from one musical genre or era to another?
Is music these days all that it used to be?

Books with interesting titles:
Faking it: the quest for authenticity in popular music / Hugh abrker and Yuval Taylor
Rockonomics: the money behind the music / Marc Eliot
Brands that rock / Roger Blackwell, Tina Stephan
Music, money, and success: the insider’s guide to the music industry / Jeffrey Brabec
Solid Gold: the popular record industry / R. Serge Denisoff
Taking popular music seriously: selected essays / Simon Frith

At this point in my research, my topic is so vague and open-ended that I really don’t have any major problems (except, I suppose, that my research topic is so vague and open-ended). I want to listen to and learn about popular music, and weigh in on some related academic issue, but I haven’t yet learn enough about (or really even listened enough to) popular music to know what the issues are. I plan on reading the perspectives of economists and musicologists and seeing who has the more interesting problems. Ideally, I could find some big issue that encompasses both fields.

The following is the album cover to Leona Lewis's debut album, Spirit
991.com/newGallery/ Leona-Lewis-Spirit-418534.jpg

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Vanessa Shiu
The high price of textbooks: causes and solutions

My research would be about the product of textbooks and college academic materials. I want to find out more about why they are priced so high and the recent increase of internet websites selling these materials. How do these prices affect consumers (college students)? Also, why are “buyback” prices so low? How has internet exchange programs affected publishing companies and their techniques?
Possible resources include magazine articles, publisher’s websites, interviews, and any statistics or data available.
I am unsure of how much has been written on this topic (books, research). I might also have to redefine my topic later. I don’t know if I will be able to identify an argument or a thesis.
A visual image is at http://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/2/29/Text_books.jpg/200px-Text_books.jpg which depicts a bookstore shelf of college textbooks.

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 09:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Stephanie Lee
Research Topic: Starbucks in South Korea

Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the word and expands globally. There are now more than 200 Starbucks stores located in Korea after the first one opened in Seoul in 1999. In fact, Korea is a home to the largest Starbucks in the world. I would like to research on what has contributed to Starbucks’ huge success in the Korean market and how Starbucks has influenced Korean consumer culture. Considering how Korea had been dominated by the tea-drinking tradition instead of the coffee-drinking tradition before the spread of Starbucks, Starbucks can represent how the western culture affects the eastern culture. I would like to explore the issue of cultural imperialism in my research.

I am going to use several books including, “Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture” and “The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary.” I also think “My Sister’s Barista: How They Made Starbucks a Home Away from Home” will help me understand the success of Starbucks in the context of foreign markets. Journals on Starbucks will be helpful as well.

My worry is that a lot of research resources that deal specifically with Starbucks in South Korea are written in Korean and have not been translated into English yet. However, there are many other resources that I can use for the research.

Here is a link to the picture of one of the most famous Starbucks stores in Korea. This is the only place where the name Starbucks is written in Korean. http://www.sneijers.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/starbuckskorea.jpg.

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Matthew Alcasid

Research Proposal

Topic=The Viral Nature of Viral Marketing

Questions
Why do companies use viral marketing? How does viral marketing work? How does viral marketing make advertising accessible to anyone? What are the psychological elements associated with viral marketing's effectiveness on consumers? What mediums work best for viral marketing? How has viral marketing transformed the internet?

Brainstorm for Research Sources
1. History of marketing/advertising books
2. Clips of contemporary viral marketing campaigns
3. Use case studies on prominent viral marketing campaigns. (I'm thinking of doing a case study on the movie Cloverfield, which involved an extremely complex marketing campaign that involved fictitious companies, fake myspace profiles of the movie's characters, and obscure cryptic websites that clued in on the existence of the movie)

Worries
1. Finding enough relevant sources because viral marketing is a relatively contemporary method and not enough information might be on it.
2. Finding credible offline sources because I feel like all the information I'm going to find out about viral marketing will be from blogs online that are about specific viral marketing campaigns.

Visual Rhetoric

This is the first trailer that came out for Cloverfield:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw_380vJ0Mo

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonathan Shea

Research Proposal

Topic=The Rise of Walmart: King of Retail

Questions
What effect does Walmart have on smaller community stores and how does this shift away from smaller stores impact consumer culture in general? Was Walmart’s business model a legitimate way of capturing the largest share of the retail industry?

Brainstorm for Research Sources
1. various business journals that delve deeply into Walmart’s business model
2. books on the consumer culture of the retail industry
3. The power to predict : how real-time businesses anticipate customer needs, create opportunities, and beat the competition / Vivek Ranadivé.
4. The age of Wal-mart [videorecording]: inside America's most powerful company

Worries
1. creating a specific argument that poses a problem about Walmart. There are a number of options, but I will also need to relate them to consumer culture.

Visual Rhetoric
http://www.thirdwayblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/walmart.jpeg

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's an initial entry in Consumer Culture, which is a category for the Stanford Consumer Culture Class. Use this category to post entries!

Posted by Stanford: Consumer Culture at 10:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)