Characteristics of brands and place branding on the Internet

This study aims to clarify the concepts of brand and branding in the new Internet environment, as complex processes that can be applied anywhere: to a physical good, a service, a store, an organization, an idea or a place. Assuming that brands have deeper meanings for consumers than the basic characteristics of the product or service being offered, the branding process is also defined in the context of places, in an effort to build a relationship with the customer and make emotional connections. Place branding perspectives are discussed, as it does not involve tourism only. It also involves the economic and socio-political sector as well as the historical perspective of the place

Typing and distribution of Plum pox virus isolates in Romania

Plum pox or Sharka, caused by Plum pox virus (PPV) is considered the most destructive disease of plum. Although PPV is widespread in all plum growing areas of Romania and causes serious yield losses, little is known about the variability of its isolates at a country level. For this reason, a large-scale study was performed with the aim of obtaining a picture of the prevalence and distribution of PPV strains in plum. During a three year survey, 200 PPV isolates collected from 23 different plum orchards from Transylvania, Moldavia and Muntenia areas were investigated. DASELISA and IC-RT-PCR were used for PPV detection. PPV strains were serologically determined by TAS-ELISA using PPV-D and PPV-M specific monoclonal antibodies. Molecular strain typing was done by IC/RT-PCR targeting three genomic regions corresponding to (Cter)CP, (Cter)NIb/(Nter)CP and CI. RFLP analysis was used to distinguish D and M strains, based on the RsaI polymorphism located in (Cter)CP. To confirm the presence of PPV-Rec strain, 13 PCR products spanning the (Cter)NIb/(Nter)CP were sequenced. Overall results showed that in Romania the predominant strain is PPV-D (73%), followed, with a much lower frequency, by PPV-Rec (14%). Mixed infections (PPV-D+PPVRec), which might generate additional variation by recombination, are also frequent (13%).Keywords: Romania, PPV strains, DAS/TAS-ELISA, IC/RT-PCR, RFLP, sequencin

Compositionality in Truth Conditional Pragmatics

In the past decade various linguists and philosophers (e.g. Pagin, Pelletier, Recanati, Westerståhl, Lasersohn) have proposed a weakening of the standard interpretation of compositionality for propositional content. Their move is motivated by the desire to accommodate radical forms of context sensitivity within a systematic account of natural languages. In this paper I argue against weakening compositionality in the way proposed by them. I argue that weak compositionality fails to provide some of the expected benefits of compositionality. First, weak compositionality fails to provide systematic meaning-rules which can handle forms of context-sensitivity that are not amenable to explanation in terms of a fixed and limited set of contextual parameters. Secondly, I argue that weak-compositionality fails to play any role in explaining speakers’ ability to calculate the semantic values of complex expressions. I conclude that weak compositionality is not a viable alternative to standard interpretations of compositionality, and that it doesn’t offer an acceptable way to accommodate radical forms of context-sensitivity within a systematic account of natural languages. Given the central role that weak-compositionality plays in recent approaches to natural language (e.g. in truth-conditional pragmatics) this also casts doubt on the viability of these projects

A brief history of brands and the evolution of place branding

The present work synthesizes the main proofs related to the fact that the brands and the process of branding are as old as the human civilization, initially through the appearance and use of the “proto-brands” concept ever since the beginning of the human existence, and then, in different forms and different historical periods, brands show a dynamic of their existence. It is highlighted the aspect according to which brands, in different historical periods, have two invariable characteristics related to information transmission to the interested parties: information related to the quality and information which indicates the origin of the product (that sometimes includes differentiated information in order to help the marketing process, such as assortment, storage, transport, etc.)

A website brand analysis of Romanian companies from automotive industry

The present study proposes an innovative analytical approach on branding and cultural concepts, looking at the correlation between them and the way the culture has an important contribution to the brand strategy of an organization. This pilot study has strictly focused on branding in the online environment and the objective of the research consists in applying the content analysis method on the official brand websites of different organizations, having a corpus of 50 companies in automotive industry, with the subsidiaries activating in Romania. The research instrument (i.e., the analysis coding scheme) evolved having as reference the cultural dimensions defined and presented by Geert Hofstede and adapted to the online environment