Marketing Animals - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

egarding the task were answered. For each word
association task, respondents had one minute to
write one-word descriptions of whatever came to
mind when they thought about the animal listed
at the top of the page (Szalay and Deese 1978).
Informants were instructed to write these words in
the order in which they came to mind and it was
stressed that there were no wrong answers. The
first animal listed in the package was lobster,
which was used as a practice task to familiarize
students with the word association method. After
completing the practice task, informants'
remaining questions about the task were
answered. Respondents then completed four
more animal word associations, responding to the
words: penguin, ant, gorilla, and raccoon. The
particular animals were chosen to reflect the
interests of the author; other animals could
illustrate the commonality of animal meanings as
well. The order in which the four animals were
presented was randomized to control for order
effects.
The words generated by informants in
response to the animal word association were
grouped into categories, or themes that emerged
from the data. Each animal was analyzed
separately, except lobster, the practice task,
which was not coded. For each animal, words
that were similar in meaning or that had a
common theme were grouped together. Each
informant's responses were added to the tentative
themes discovered in the previous informants'
responses, thus supporting those themes or
allowing them to be changed (Strauss and Corbin
1990). Guidelines suggested by Szalay and Deese
(1978) were followed when identifying common
themes.
Words that could not be placed into any
category were placed into an "other" category.
These words did not have an identifiable
association with the animal; they are thought to
be associations to words other than the animal
(i.e., chain associations) or words that show that
the respondent was thinking of something other
than the task at hand. There were only 10 to 16 of
these words for each animal.
A second researcher re-classified all of the
response words into the categories to check the
soundness of the themes. There was an initial 86%
agreement between researchers; disagreements
were resolved through discussion and re-analysis
of informant responses. The response words for all
of the animals are available from the author.
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COGNITIVE MAP OF PENGUIN THEMES
The themes elicited in response to each animal
were illustrated using cognitive maps, representing
a pictorial overview of each animal's meaning.
The cognitive map summarizes the objects and
ideas that informants collectively associate with
each animal, and organizes these associations
into meaningful themes (Coleman 1992). The
cognitive map also identifies the number of times
each theme was mentioned, giving an idea of
the relative importance of each theme to the
animal's shared meaning.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
General Results
Informants mentioned between 315 and 386
words in response to each animal, or
approximately 9 to 11 words per individual. It was
surprising that more than 90% of informants'
responses could be classified into six or seven
main themes for each animal. In addition,
informants' words were easily coded into these
themes, reflecting a high degree of similarity
between respondents. Also, words with the highest
frequencies were mentioned by 8 to 25
individuals, which suggests a high degree of
consistency across individuals' responses. These
results support the idea that there exist shared
cultural meanings that consumers generally
associate with animals, and that these meanings
can be elicited through word association.
Interestingly, although it was not the intent
at the outset, the themes that emerged from the
data were remarkably similar between animals.
The primary themes mentioned by informants
include: (a) Appearance, (b) Habitat, (c)
Personality, (d) Human/animal interaction, (e)
Popular culture, and (f) Behavior. These six
categories seem to be most salient for
consumers, and may offer the greatest help in
creating animal characters for use in advertising
campaigns. Appearance summarizes informants'
mental images of the animal C how they expect
the animal to look; Habitat describes informants'
expectations of where these animals live and the
objects that surround them; Personality represents
the personality traits that informants associate with
each animal; Human/animal interaction
describes how humans coexist and interact with
these animals; while Behavior describes their
typical actions. Popular culture highlights cultural
references that already exist for each animal,