ABSTRACT
The purchasers of commodities comprise both other companies and purchasers of commodities for ‘final’ consumption. However, reactions to advertisements are not just shaped by the intentions of their authors but also by the attributes and positionality of potential consumers. The ways in which companies seek to influence potential consumers have altered significantly over time, partly in recognition of the fact that would-be consumers may challenge the intended meanings that their advertisements seek to convey. Advertisements, psychological and social research and the mass media are not the only sources of information on which potential consumers can draw and through which companies can seek to persuade them to purchase their products. This emphasises the ways in which the interplay between the producers and consumers of advertisements results in innovative co-produced forms of advertisements as well as consumer involvement in the co-production of the commodities that are advertised.
