Marketing at the Edge of Culture
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I founded Marketing Semiotics in 2000 as a consumer research and consulting firm serving blue-chip brands including Ford, American Express, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Pfizer, and Dominos. We help CEO’s and senior executives anticipate cultural change and manage its effects on brands, consumer behavior and innovation strategy. Working with a team of international experts in North America, UK, Europe, China, Korea, and India. We manage a range of projects including communication research, design development, and large multi-market consumer studies for brand positioning, new product development, and market expansion.
Speaking
Books
Articles
How Semiotic Ethnography Cracked the Code on Chronic Pain
What Do Affluent Chinese Consumers Want?
Creating Value: The Theory and Practice of Marketing Semiotics Research
Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle-Class Haitian Immigrants
The Structural Semiotics Paradigm for Marketing Research: Theory, Methodology, and Case Analysis
How Discourse Theory Exposed Fraud in a Digital Hypertext Campaign and Proved Trademark Infringement on the Playboy Brand Name
“Anyone concerned with the cultural construction of value will benefit from her many and varied analyses of the contemporary brandscape.”
“A breath of fresh air to the confining functional benefit brand view.”
“This is required reading for everyone … it offers a cogent perspective on how brand and social processes are now intrinsically intertwined.”
“Creating Value is a remarkable book, not only written skillfully, but with a rare mix of cutting-edge theory and practice on the market-based taking of meanings.”
“Beginning with a remarkably lucid overview of semiotic theory, Oswald demonstrates the unique and valuable insights that can accrue from using semiotic frameworks to address complex marketing problems in the domains of advertising, branding, and service design.”