Jonathan Schroeder brings together a curated selection of papers on brands and branding, originally published in the interdisciplinary journal Consumption Markets and Culture. Organised into four perspectives - cultural, corporate, consumer, and critical - each section contextualised by a new introduction from leading brand scholars. This thought-provoking collection will be of interest to scholars of marketing, consumer behaviour, and sociology and anyone interested in the role brands play in our lives and culture.

Introduction Part I : Cultural Perspectives 2. Brand Culture and Branded Workers: Service work and aesthetic labour in fashion retail 3. Packaging as Vehicle for Mythologizing the Brand 4. Just doing it: A visual ethnographic study of spectacular consumption behavior at Nike Town 5. Commentary: The cultural approach to branding Part II: Corporate Perspectives 6. Transnational Organization and Symbolic Production: Creating and managing a global brand 7. Retail Stores as Brands: Performances, theatre and space 8. Learning to say g'day to the World: The development of Australia's marketable image in the 1980s 9. The Technology of Branding Part III: Consumer Perspectives 10. Consumer-Brand Assemblages in Advertising: An analysis of skin, identity, and tattoos in ads 11. Consumer Multiculturation: Consequences of multi-cultural identification for brand knowledge 12. The Role of Commodified Celebrities in Children's Moral Development: The case of David Beckham 13. Limits of the McDonaldization Thesis: eBayization and ascendant trends in post- industrial consumer culture 14. Commentary: The consumer perspective in branding Part IV: Critical Perspectives 15. Aesthetics Awry: The Painter of Light(TM) and the commodification of artistic values 16. Consuming the "World": Reflexivity, aesthetics, and authenticity at Disney World's EPCOT Center 17. Consuming Caffeine: The discourse of Starbucks and coffee 18. A Compr(om)ising Commodities in Consumer Culture: Fetishism, aesthetics and authenticity

Jonathan Schroeder is the William A. Kern Professor of Communications at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He is the author of Visual Consumption (2002), co-author of From Chinese Brand Culture to Global Brands (2013), editor of Conversations on Consumption (2013), and co-editor of Brand Culture (2006), the Routledge Companion to Visual Organization (2014), as well as a special issue on "Being Branded" for the Scandinavian Journal of Management (June 2013). He is editor in chief of the interdisciplinary journal Consumption Markets & Culture. He has held visiting appointments at Wesleyan University, Göteborg University Sweden, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Bocconi University in Milan, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and the Shanghai International Business and Economics University.