L'assiologia del consumo: dalle strutture narrative ai valori

The article focuses on the notion of “value” in a semiotic perspective and concentrates on how this notion is used in advertising and in marketing, where values are central, since a brand should always be tuned with consumer axiologies. Algirdas J. Greimas’s generative semiotics is identified as the main contribution on the subject. Semiotics seems to conceive values like the result of an instinctive, emotional polarization of the semantic system: a conception which is very similar to the one of consumer research, especially of psychographic researches. Analyzing the campaign of a leading Italian brand in the food industry, the article highlights the main rhetorical and narrative devices through which advertisements on the one hand activate some desired values and, on the other hand, develop their ideological discourse, putting other values (i.e. ideas which are not consistent with brand image) in the shade. It is shown that when repositioning a brand in the consumer perception, irony is a key strategy in order to substitute an old axiology with a new one.