Abstract for the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers
San Francisco, CA 2007

Point Of Purchase Perceptions: Selling Products With Place

Keywords:
Place, Marketing, Advertising, Candy Bars, Point of Purchase,

Type:
Paper
Abstract:
Point of Sales or Point of Purchase (POS or POP) advertising has a long history of linking products with the advertising images on signs, wrappers and product labels. For many products using this form or advertising, a sense or notion of place plays an important role in identifying the product to the consumer. Although textual references can build powerful identities with products and places, i.e. Pendleton Shirts ...a shirt manufactured in Pendleton, Oregon... images are also used by advertisers to make direct and sometimes subliminal references to a product's place/landscape connections. Sometimes these may have little to do with the product's origin. This presentation will explore how the imagery of place is used to sell a product at the point of purchase level. Examples of labels will be shown. Taking the landscape categories from D.W. Meinig's, Beholding the Eye a simple analysis model will be presented that students can use in evaluating POP images in the context of places and landscapes. David Lowenthal suggests that "beyond that of any other discipline... the subject matter of geography approximates the world of general discourse; the palpable present, the everyday life of man on earth, is seldom far from our professional concerns." Thus, even a lowly candy bar wrapper may have something of geography etched upon it! Consider the "Idaho Spud", the "Mountain Bar" or the "Old Faithful"...confections, all covered up at the point of sale in wrappers steeped in images of place!

Special Request:
accessible

Authors:
M Marian Mustoe, Eastern Oregon University mmustoe@eou.edu

Topics:
Marketing geography, Economic Geography, Education, Perceptual Landscapes