OUGD401 - Study Task 01 - Finding Research Sources

COP Theme: SOCIETY

Key Terms: Gender, body image, gender and advertising, gender and the media, gender representation, gender and branding, consumer society.

Finding a variety of research sources when undertaking a project is crucial to understanding the history behind the theme of your work, as well as making your work more informative and to help make informative design decisions or analysis. Sources can come from written texts in the form of books, journals and magazine articles, and online resources such as websites, blog posts and e-books. Information could also be gathered from research visits, such as to museums and galleries.

Our task was to find relevant research sources for our chosen theme/quote, and to facilitate our methods of gathering these sources, which focus on speed, accuracy and reliability, as well as the physical content of the resources.

LCA Library:

1. Consumer Psychology (2010) - Catherine Jansson-Boyd.

"Many studies have found that both women and men do not believe that their current body form is attractive... Research has repeatedly found that physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable than those that are perceived as being unattractive, something that is likely to have been reinforced by consumer societies".

Dr Catherine Jansson-Boyd is a consumer psychologist and a Reader in psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, with a particular interest in how consumers evaluate products and consumer environments based on aesthetics. She has published a number of books based on her two main categories of research, being consumer psychology and aesthetic research. Her vast amount of research means she has years worth of experience and knowledge into the subject of consumer psychology and society, therefore making her a trustworthy source of research. Although, many psychological studies can be unreliable due to confounding variables, which can reduce the validity of the research and so must also be taken into consideration when using such resources.

2. Media, Gender and Identity - An Introduction (2008) - David Gauntlett.

3. Gender and the Media (2006) - Rosalind Gill.

4. Media and Society: Critical Perspectives (2004) - Graeme Burton.

Google Books (preview):

1. Advertising Cultures: Gender, Commerce and Creativity (2008) - Sean Nixon.

2. Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn't and Why? (2008) - Max Sutherland.

3. Putting on Appearances: Gender and Advertising (1988) - Diane Barthel.

Google Scholar:

1. Controversies in Contemporary Advertising (2013), Chapter 7: Gender and Advertising - Kim Bartel Sheehan.

2. Women's Studies in Communication: The Gender of Branding (2008) - J. M. Grow.

3. Journal of Consumer Research: Why do Brands Cause Trouble: A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding (2002) - D. B. Holt.

Websites:

1. webdam.com/blog/the-psychology-behind-the-brands-we-love

"Identity may explain why many of the best-loved brands communicate personality traits that consumers identify with or wish to emulate, such as being young, tech-savvy, wealthy, or sexy. If your brand doesn't resonate with your customer's real or desired identity, it's unlikely your brand will inspire love".

This blog post focuses on three concepts from psychology which many explain the reasons we love certain brands: emotional decision making, identity and social identity. It makes reference to Apple's 2006 'Get a Mac' campaign which suggested that the brands we buy signify the type of person you are, which in turn helps to form our identities. Published in April 2015, the post is still fairly recent, which increases the reliability of the source. However, it is not certain that the information collected came themselves from reliable sources. For example, one of these sources being a news article could be questioned, as information in such articles occasionally get manipulated by editors and journalists to imply a slightly different message than originally intended.

2. interbrand.com/views/examining-gender-roles-in-the-context-of-brand/

3. teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/advertising-cultures.pdf

Jstor:

1. Gender Representations in Advertising: No Time for Change (2000) - Lena Slachmuijlder.

2. Putting on Appearances: Gender and Advertising (1988) - Diane Barthel.

3. Gendered by Design: How Woman's Place in Design is Still Defined by Gender (1999) - Sue Clegg and Wendy Mayfield.