Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Merchants of Cool

1. What is “cool hunting” and how is it done? What theories and methods of media research are the “cool hunters” using?
Cool hunting is the search for a certain type of personality that is considered “cool” by the teenage population. It is done by gathering information on what will “sell” in the market at the time. “Cool hunters” use a variety of methods including surveys, focus groups, and the usual case study.

2. According to the commentators in the video, why do television, music, and fashion corporations want to understand how teenagers think and what they want?
Because the media only wants to know what will sell. The teenage generation is a $50 billion a year business for the media. So the big corporations including; News Corp, Viacom, Disney, Universal, and AOL will do whatever it takes to find out what the teens want.

3. How do MTV executives and other programming and marketing decision-makers characterize their relationship to teen culture? Do they say they are creating or reflecting teen culture?
The market executives claim that they are only reflecting the teen culture. I believe that they are creating the culture. The businesses like MTV choose which bands will be listened to and which will be silently killed. So in a sense the corporations are making the same culture they are trying so desperately to be a part of.

4.what is the difference between marketing research and human research, according to the commentators in the video? What are the goals of each?
Marketing research is research for the sole purpose of finding out what will sell to a certain group of people while human research is research where the companies figure out what the people want as individuals. The goals of each are to determine what will sell to the people that the company is focused on.

5. Who is giving the most accurate description of the relationship between teen culture and commercialization, the “merchants of cool” or their critics? What role are these institutions playing in the socialization process? Argue for one of these two positions using specific points and examples from the movie.
I believe that the critics give the better view of the relationship between the two factors. The merchants claim that they are only mirroring the teen culture while the critics say that they are creating the culture entirely. For example, most of the music you listen to on the radio is produced by a major record label. The only bands that are not are the ones who make their claim to fame underground. So the corporations are deciding which items should and should not be listened to by the mainstream teen culture.

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