Books

The book introduces managers and students to the basics of marketing semiotics for positioning brands, developing creative strategy, conducting strategic consumer research, designing retail space, and integrating consumer experiences in social media planning.

“Anyone concerned with the cultural construction of value will benefit from her many and varied analyses of the contemporary brandscape.”

John F. Sherry, Jr.
Herrick Professor of Marketing, the University of Notre Dame

“A breath of fresh air to the confining functional benefit brand view.”

David Aaker
Vice-Chairman, Prophet

“This is required reading for everyone … it offers a cogent perspective on how brand and social processes are now intrinsically intertwined.”

Marcel Danesi
Professor of Anthropology, the University of Toronto

Behavioral economists revised the supply and demand model of economics by taking showing correlations between value creation and the meanings consumers invest into goods, social rituals, and relationships. The book proposes advanced semiotic research methods for managing the brand’s semiotic equities through new product development, consumer ethnography, and hypertext media programs. Through concept development and case analysis, the book extends the scope of Marketing Semiotics by mapping and then deconstructing the codes structuring meanings in the marketplace.

“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.”

Markus Giesler
Professor of Marketing, York University

“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.”

David Aaker
Churchill Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin, Madison

“Today marketing managers look for customer insights directly, by getting out and talking to people where they shop and consume. The more they do so, the more they realize that interpretive and ethnographic skills are not innate; they need to be learned.  Books like this one, unpacking the science and art of semiotics, are essential reading for managers responsible for insights research.”

John Deighton
The Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

In this book, Laura Oswald brings semiotic theory and marketing practice together through an engaging and illuminating series of case studies. 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. Her analyses astutely pin point the limitations of more conventional approaches and show the clear strategic advantages offered by a semiotically informed, cultural perspective. This book should have a strong appeal for marketing academics and practitioners alike.
Craig Thompson
Churchill Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Laura Oswald’s truly original interdisciplinary Marketing Semiotics and its compendium Creating Value are groundbreaking, foundational works that incorporate a wide range of modern and postmodern semiotic, economic and deconstruction theories, seminal for understanding the foundations of marketing semiotics. Creating value, an intellectual tour de force is a seminal work for all those interested in semiotic theory, and marketing in particular, contributing to the establishment of this dynamic field as an exciting innovative academic discipline that furthers our comprehension of social behaviour in general.
Paul Perron
Professor Emeritus, the University of Toronto