• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.721-741
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• 2007

1. For the types of boiled rice, there were 1 type of bap, 1 type of jebap cooked with glutinous rice, 13 types of boiled rice cooked by mixing grains and nuts such as daemakban, somakban, jobap, cheongryangmiban, jobap, gijangbap, yulmubap, hyeonmibap, boribap and patmulbap as well as patbap, congbap, byeolbap and bambap etc as ogokbap. Also, there were 12 types of bap cooked by mixing herb medicinal ingredients such as cheongjeong, oban, boksungabap, gumeunsaekbap, hwanggukgamchobap, yeongeunbap, okjeongbap, gogumabap, dububap, samssibap, dorajibap, gamjabap, songibap and jukshilbap. There were 7 types bap cooked as unique one bowl dish at the present as bapby mixing fish, meat, shellfish and milk as ingredients are hwangtang, gyejanggukbap, janggukbap, gulbap, kimchibap, chusaban and bibimbap, etc and the types of bap that have been analyzed are 34 total. 2. For the food ingredients used in bap types 23 types of miscellaneous grains, 5 types of nuts and 11 types of meat, 6 types of fish, 35 types of vegetables, 2 types of fruit including pears or peaches were used. Garlic wasn't used perhaps because of it being boiled rice 3. Types of Sap by Cooking Methods. (1) The ssalbap was cooked by first boiling water, putting in rice grains and boiling hard to be cooked as overcooked bap (rice). (2) The japgokbap (boiled cereals) has used buckwheat, barley job's tear, etc to be boiled down by soaking the ones with large grains (beans) first in advance to be boiled down or cooked by crushing into fine pieces. The red bean, etc was boiled down in advance or placed at the bottom of pot by cutting into two pieces while jujube or nut was cut into three pieces to cook the bap by pouring a lot of water and mixing other ingredients. (3) The gukbap (soup boiled rice), etc were cooked by squeezing out the yellow chrysanthemum that has dried chrysanthemum to cook the boiled rice by putting in rice and gukbap, meat or bones, etc were boiled down for a long time and decorated with meat or wild greens by mixing the bap in the meat juice. For gulbap (oyster boiled rice), etc, it was cooked as ingredients were stir fried in advance or washed and put in when the bap was about half cooked. (4) For bibimbap (mixed boiled rice), after the bap was overcooked first with rice, the wild greens were mixed lightly with bap beforehand, then the wild greens, decorations and garnishings were laid above rice and red pepper powder was sprinkled. (5) Namchok leaves, etc were boiled to cook the boiled rice with rice after being cooled while namchok stem and leaves were pounded to make juice and cooked the bap with rice. The peach, lotus root and yams were cut into fine pieces to be put in together when rice was about half done. The bellflower was soaked in water to be boiled down for a long time while potatoes and pine mushrooms, etc were cut into fine pieces to cook the bap (boiled rice) with rice.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.71-76
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• 1973

1. This survey is somewhat different from that conducted by Yonsei University, although being in many respects, very similar. We found the average per capita caloric intake to be 7 or 8% of what it should be. Of that caloric intake, 84.5% in the model village here and 82.2% in the compared village Bupyong, by and large depends on cereal grains. Since such grains tend to distend the stomach, the farmers, it seems,should substitute fat for a part of their diet so as to dimish digestive pain and still receive the necessary calories. 2. Protein is the most important nutrient for the development of physical strength and improvement of health, but the average daily intake is only 68.3% of the necessary amount. It is desirable that the ratio of vegetable protein to that of animal be one to three for maintaining one's health. Most of the villager's protein, however, comes from plants: the intake of animal protein, at a level of only 13.6 g, is far below such a one to three ratio. 3. In the model village, 497.6 mg, of inorganic calcium is the daily intake level. In the compared village it is 505.5 mg, making a difference of only 8mg. This, however, is 35% less than the recommended intake. More than 50% of this calcium comes from cereals and other plants. Moreover, plant calcium which has much oxakuc acud us not as nutritional as animal calcium, so their calcium diet is less than it would appear. We must, therefore, make efforts to receive as good nutritional calcium as possible. 4. Among the vitamin group, the daily average intake of vitamin A and vitamin $B_{2}$ are respectively 40% and 32% less than the desired intake, while vitamin $B_{1}$ happens to be taken in sufficient quantities and more niacin is taken than which is even necessary. The intake of vitamin C is much more than the necessary quantity. However, this figure was calculated from uncooked food; if the loss from cooking were to be considered, the real intake might well be a little less. Also, as this survey was carried out in May, some of these results were influenced by the fact that lettuce and spinach are seasonally popular. In conclusion, except for a few nutrients which are in abundance, the normal food intake in a day is, on the whole, less than the average recommended. Furthermore despite the fact that both of these places are model villages in the development of nutrition, it seems that they have not gotten out of such conventional eating habiys as the almost dependancy on cereal grains. Cow's milk, sheep's milk, eggs and so on produced by each farmhouse are not used for their own families but are taken to the market for the purpose of making money. Accordingly, I think from now we must seek to improve, guide and enlighten the farmers as to how to correct their eating habits and implement changes in their lives so that our firm purpose may be achieved.