Purpose

This paper examines how organic candies are marketed as healthy and ethical choices on commercial websites through the use of visual, rhetorical and promotional strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis to identify the narratives and discursive traits that organic candy manufacturers reproduce on their websites as part of their ethical branding policy. The dataset is formed by 10 websites that commercialize organic confectionery.

Findings

The findings indicate that sellers try to associate organic candy to healthiness, simple and traditional lifestyles and social awareness to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Often the ethical claims that organic candy websites reproduce are not justified.

Research limitations/implications

A major limitation of this study is that the investigation does not evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical and discursive strategies on real consumer decisions. Further research of an ethnographic or empirical nature would be required for this purpose.

Practical implications

This study recognizes the strategies that organic candy sellers reproduce can help consumers make more informed choices. From the point of view of marketers, understanding the multimodal, rhetorical and discursive strategies that organic candy brands employ can be useful to devise their own marketing approaches.

Originality/value

The investigation contributes to a growing body of research about multimodal critical discourse analysis within food marketing studies. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper that analyses organic candy branding from a multimodal perspective.

中文翻译：

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出售有机糖果：商业网站的多模式批判性话语分析

目的

本文探讨了如何通过使用视觉，修辞和促销策略，将有机糖果作为健康和符合道德的选择在商业网站上销售。

设计/方法/方法

该研究使用社会符号学和多模式批判性话语分析来识别有机糖果制造商在其网站上作为其道德品牌政策的一部分复制的叙事和话语特征。该数据集由将有机糖果商业化的10个网站组成。

发现

调查结果表明，卖方试图将有机糖果与健康，简单和传统的生活方式以及社会意识联系起来，以使其与竞争对手区分开来。通常，有机糖果网站复制的道德主张是没有道理的。

研究局限/意义

这项研究的主要局限性在于，调查并未评估修辞和话语策略对实际消费者决策的有效性。为此，需要对人种学或经验性质进行进一步研究。

实际影响

这项研究认识到有机糖果销售商复制的策略可以帮助消费者做出更明智的选择。从营销人员的角度来看，了解有机糖果品牌采用的多模式，修辞和话语策略可能有助于设计自己的营销方法。

创意/价值

该调查有助于食品营销研究中有关多模式批判性话语分析的研究不断发展。就作者所知，这是第一篇从多模式角度分析有机糖果品牌的论文。