• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2010

The anthropomorphism of brands, defined as seeing human beings in brands (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rosereto, 2008) is the focus of this study. Specifically, the research objective is to understand the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike. By analyzing consumer readings of stories found on food product packages we intend to show how marketers and consumers humanize a spectrum of brands and create meanings. Our research question considers the possibility that a single brand may host multiple or single meanings, associations, and personalities for different consumers. We start by highlighting the theoretical and practical significance of our research, explain why we turn our attention to packages as vehicles of brand meaning transfer, then describe our qualitative methodology, discuss findings, and conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and directions for future studies. The study was designed to directly expose consumers to potential vehicles of brand meaning transfer and then engage these consumers in free verbal reflections on their perceived meanings. Specifically, we asked participants to read non-nutritional stories on selected branded food packages, in order to elicit data about received meanings. Packaging has yet to receive due attention in consumer research (Hine, 1995). Until now, attention has focused solely on its utilitarian function and has generated a body of research that has explored the impact of nutritional information and claims on consumer perceptions of products (e.g., Loureiro, McCluskey and Mittelhammer, 2002; Mazis and Raymond, 1997; Nayga, Lipinski and Savur, 1998; Wansik, 2003). An exception is a recent study that turns its attention to non-nutritional packaging narratives and treats them as cultural productions and vehicles for mythologizing the brand (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). The next step in this stream of research is to explore how such mythologizing activity affects brand personality perception and how these perceptions relate to consumers. These are the questions that our study aimed to address. We used in-depth interviews to help overcome the limitations of quantitative studies. Our convenience sample was formed with the objective of providing demographic and psychographic diversity in order to elicit variations in consumer reflections to food packaging stories. Our informants represent middle-class residents of the US and do not exhibit extreme alternative lifestyles described by Thompson as "cultural creatives" (2004). Nine people were individually interviewed on their food consumption preferences and behavior. Participants were asked to have a look at the twelve displayed food product packages and read all the textual information on the package, after which we continued with questions that focused on the consumer interpretations of the reading material (Scott and Batra, 2003). On average, each participant reflected on 4-5 packages. Our in-depth interviews lasted one to one and a half hours each. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, providing 140 pages of text. The products came from local grocery stores on the West Coast of the US and represented a basic range of food product categories, including snacks, canned foods, cereals, baby foods, and tea. The data were analyzed using procedures for developing grounded theory delineated by Strauss and Corbin (1998). As a result, our study does not support the notion of one brand/one personality as assumed by prior work. Thus, we reveal multiple brand personalities peacefully cohabiting in the same brand as seen by different consumers, despite marketer attempts to create more singular brand personalities. We extend Fournier's (1998) proposition, that one's life projects shape the intensity and nature of brand relationships. We find that these life projects also affect perceived brand personifications and meanings. While Fournier provides a conceptual framework that links together consumers’ life themes (Mick and Buhl, 1992) and relational roles assigned to anthropomorphized brands, we find that consumer life projects mold both the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike and the ways in which brands connect to consumers' existential concerns. We find two modes through which brands are anthropomorphized by our participants. First, brand personalities are created by seeing them through perceived demographic, psychographic, and social characteristics that are to some degree shared by consumers. Second, brands in our study further relate to consumers' existential concerns by either being blended with consumer personalities in order to connect to them (the brand as a friend, a family member, a next door neighbor) or by distancing themselves from the brand personalities and estranging them (the brand as a used car salesman, a "bunch of executives.") By focusing on food product packages, we illuminate a very specific, widely-used, but little-researched vehicle of marketing communication: brand storytelling. Recent work that has approached packages as mythmakers, finds it increasingly challenging for marketers to produce textual stories that link the personalities of products to the personalities of those consuming them, and suggests that "a multiplicity of building material for creating desired consumer myths is what a postmodern consumer arguably needs" (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). Used as vehicles for storytelling, food packages can exploit both rational and emotional approaches, offering consumers either a "lecture" or "drama" (Randazzo, 2006), myths (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004), or meanings (McCracken, 2005) as necessary building blocks for anthropomorphizing their brands. The craft of giving birth to brand personalities is in the hands of writers/marketers and in the minds of readers/consumers who individually and sometimes idiosyncratically put a meaningful human face on a brand.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.93-105
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• 1993

This study was carried out to determine the concentrations of previtamin D$_3$(PreD$_3$), lumisterol$_3$(L3), tachystero1$_3$(73), vitamin D$_3$(VD$_3$) and provitamin D$_3$(ProD$_3$) in leg skins of broiler chicks exposed to UVB lights (maximum intensity at 297 nm) with dose of 0.204 or 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$(30 or 60 min irradiation) . The broiler Hubbard line day old chicks(2 dose $\times$9 elapsed time $\times$4 replica＋10 control＝82) were fed VD-deficient diet for 31 days in a windowless subdued light room. The skin was collected at 0, 6, 12, 18, 30, 42, 66, 90 or 138 hr after UVB irradiation. The skin lipid was extracted by 9％ ethyl acetate/n-hexane, and the fraction of VD$_3$ and its analogues was purified by Sep-Pak silica cartridge. The straight phase HPLC was utilized to analyze ProD$_3$ and its products. The mole ％(absolute level expressed in ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) of PreD$_3$ in leg skin (epidermis＋dermis) was 4.67％(44 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 3.97％(37 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) right after UVB irradiation by 0.204 or 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$(30 or 60 min) at 15 cm distance, respectively. It content in leg skin at 0 hr after exposure was 7.24％(12 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 0.92％(9 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$), respectively. The increase in irradiation dose did not affect proportionally the If synthesis.73 concentration in leg skin was 0.58％(S ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 0.57％(6 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$), respectively 0 hr after irradiation. The VD$_3$ in leg skin of birds exposed to UVB light with dose of 0.204 or 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$ was 2.13％ (21 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 0.97％ (16ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$), respectively at 0 hr after exposure, 2.72％(26ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 3.84％(37ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$), respectively at 6 hr, and 4.30％ ((33ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$) or 6.40％(76ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$), respectively at 12 hr. The peak concentration of VD$_3$ was presented at 18 or 30 hr when 0.204 or 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$) was treated, respectively. It was shown that 18~30 hr were necessary for the thermal conversion of PreD$_3$ into VD$_3$ in the leg skin of broiler chicks. The ProD$_3$ contents in leg skins of negative control, 0.204 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$ and 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$ treated birds were 966, 948 and 815 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$, respectively at right before and after UVB exposure. It was estimated that 18 or 151 ng/$\textrm{cm}^2$ of ProD$_3$ was isomerized to PreD$_3$, L$_3$, T$_3$ and VD$_3$ when exposed to 0.204 or 0.409 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$, respective)y. Consequently it was shown that when double dose of UVB light was applied to irradiate the chick body, more but not double synthesis of VD$_3$ and its analogues was occured in leg skin of brolier chicks.