Culturally Responsive Marketing & a textbook in Indonesia [part 03 of 05]

Discussion of how the Literature Relates to the Project


There is a tri-prong set of class-associated needs, both processed and experienced, that this document is now at a juncture to clarify. The first has been to be responsive to the course content. The second, for which the course generously allowed the writer to focus (at least periodically) on applying the material to a real-world circumstance, has been the "textbook to be". At a tertiary level, the course makes its own contribution toward a dissertation. The following gives brief expression to each.

Core Course Content

In the wake of approximately a dozen papers written for this course, the overarching threads include micro and macroscopic sensibilities of context as regards marketing, considerations of the relative big picture (true global, regional and Indonesian in particular) and a few choice chunks of significance (trade blocs, legal and ethics, and significant meditation on standardization/customization).

For a course on culturally responsive marketing, such considerations seem de rigueur, presuming one actually wants to learn the material. On the few occasions where the course content dictated specific direction, (IKEA, codes of conduct), the knowledge base was nonetheless expanded. Although these latter movements may not be as directly integrated, they will nonetheless inform and serve to further clarity of vision.

Application

At this writing, this author's contact at the publishing house is a “one remove” from the Swiss home office; based in West Sussex, and writes, “that the proposal is currently out for peer review. This process usually takes a couple of weeks. When we have secured the peer-review feedback then I will have a second conversation with (the) publisher as to how we proceed. As soon as this decision is reached I’ll be in touch.”

As such, there has been little else for this writer to do in the intervening month since that last communication. Nonetheless, the ability to arbitrage the core course material (to further inform a back-story and) to more nearly understand how such a dynamic could work elsewhere and else wise had been a rich learning experience.

Presuming the textbook is a go, and AVA has any interest whatsoever in marketing the volume in Indonesia (doubtful at this time), it seems the majority of any knowledge base (enough of a knowledge base) to this end is now established. In fact, the writer is developing a sensibility of becoming a relative subject matter expert as regards marketing generally in Indonesia.

The growing familiarity with the dynamics of marketing, coupled with the growing familiarity with Southeast Asia, extends the reach of what is possible and where.

Toward Dissertation

Despite the fact that the choice of dissertation topic is approximately a year from absolute commitment, the sensibility in place is that the topic would question and measure the relative success or incapacity for those in the applied arts fields most closely associated with marketing to market themselves. Consequently, the focus would be on illustrators, graphic designers, people in production, exhibition designers, packaging designers and the like.

The curiosity of this is several-fold. One consideration is that this is as basic as the left-brain, right-brain dynamic. While marketing may lend itself more nearly to the right-brain universe, it nonetheless resides as an expression of business proper, most all of which is left-brain. If the reader will excuse the brief tangent, this is the underlying motivation for translating a business primer for applied artists.

The other significant movement questions the degree to which the evolution of secondary education in the United States for such applied artists has met the intention. Decades ago the liberal arts and/or general education classes that framed such majors (as the applied art majors indicated) were just so many extra classes so as to meet accreditation standards, with no authentic connection to that which was being pursued. This writer, for example, was an illustration major at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia across the second half of the 1970s into the early 80s. An anthropology class is remembered where the memorization of the dentition of every primate was the whole of the course. Such information has yet to prove itself useful, without exception. However, not once was the course in any kind of business whatsoever offered. Across this last quarter century however, to varying degrees from school to school, this evolution has been taking place. Not quite a side note, and not the focus of the research to come, also worth mentioning has been the parallel movement of institutionalizing departments at such schools committed to placing graduates employ ably within their fields upon graduation.

Given the presumption of the dissertation topic as it stands, one might imagine that the whole of the coursework lent itself to a different perspective. Indeed, the majority of the work lent itself to the assimilation of learning objectives as one looked out, not within; and certainly not in such nooks and crannies. However, there may be more than immediately meets the eye. Perhaps the most expressive gesture in this direction was the research and development of so many databases. This skill alone, the self-production of knowledge management, the likes of which is inherently difference making, is exactly the kind of self-marketing component that can be else wise implemented.