The Commoditization of Values in the Marketplace: Linguistics Utilized in Marketing Discourse

The Commoditization of Values in the Marketplace: Linguistics Utilized in Marketing Discourse

D. Castagna

This paper discusses how branding has moved from an implicit discourse regarding personal values within product marketing and advertising narratives to explicit discourse on values where actual products are absent. A brand is a mark or a sign that produces many possible meanings and contexts, as well as generating pragmatic effects on subjects and objects through identification and by giving them value (Mangano and Marrone 2015:46). It is in these advertising stories that brand discourse emerges, and within these narrations where consumers valorize objects, while creating relations with them and through them (Mangano and Marrone 2015:47). Marketing discourse has taken the next step in constructing narratives that use personal values not only as a branding communique, but as a way to commoditize such values in and of themselves. This paper will argue that within marketing discourse values are in process of or have become completely commoditized. The analysis will cover briefly the concept of values-based marketing as much has been written on the subject. Next, the process and framework of commoditization and commodity will be discussed and then the focus will turn to the techniques and framework used to analyze marketing discourse. The last section of this paper will include an analysis using the aforementioned techniques and framework and commodity/ commoditization concepts and definitions to demonstrate that values are being if they are not already commoditized. For the marketing discourse analysis, samples from the branding/ advertising campaign of Dove and Lane Bryant will be utilized. This will demonstrate how marketers are using personal values to create value and solve their consumers’ problems.