Market Pitching

7/29/2019 Market Pitching

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M arket Pitching an d Th e Ethnog raphy of SpesikingJohn F. Sherry, Jr. , Northwestern UniversityAbstract

The direct sales encounter has rarely beendescribed in anything resembling its full contextualrichness. Further, attention to this encounter has beenlargely confined to the primary retail sector of theeconomy. In this paper, a perspective drawn fromlinguistic anthropology is used to examine thepersuasive rhetoric of market pitchers as it unfolds in aculturally significant setting. The secondary or informaleconomic sector is used as the fieldsite.

Performance and the Sales EncounterWhile a full-blown sociolinguistic tradition ofresearch into consumer behavior has not yet emerged,increasing attention has been paid to the role oflanguage in consumption. Persuasive rhetoric has beenthe focus of much traditional consumer research, but thebulk of this interest has been in messages conveyedthrough mass media or through material culture (e.g.,labels). Recently, however, the kind of research intosymbolic communication long espoused by Levy (1978,

1981) has accelerated. Semiotic analyses of consumerbehavior (Holbrook and Grayson 1986, Mick 1986,Sherry and Camargo 1987, Umiker-Sebeok and Levy1987) building upon the discontinuous antecedents in thediscipline have used language as a tool to unlock themeaning encoded in consumption, and have usedconsumption itself as a vehicle for interpreting the richsignificance of language.Although such work has explored linguisticdynamics, it has continued to dwell on such "finished"products E3 advertising (Beem an 1986), rumor (Sherry1984), or movies (Hirschman 1987). In this article, suchproducts constitute just one component of a largercommunicative frame. Elsewhere (Sherry 1980) I havenoted a shift from text-orientation to action-, event- andcommunication-orientation, on the part of theoristsconcemed with verbal art. Bauman (1975) has identified across-disciplinary integrative tradition focused on"performance," which treats the emergent and pattemeddimensions of speech. Text, event, and social structureare manipulated through performance. The sales encounteris at once strategic social interaction and verbal art.Thus, construing the market pitch as a performancepermits ths analyst to gain a deeper understanding of thesales encounter. While a dramaturgical perspective ofconsumer behavior has occasionally been advocated(Dichter 1975, Leiss, Kline and Jhally 1986, Sherry1987b), the rich significance of persuasive performance,especially in direct sales encounters, has seldom beenplumbed.Performance in the context of market society is

more often experienced than consciously evaluated.Performance has been called the structuring of structure(Kapferer 1986). The performances with which thisarticle is concemed -market pitching- are examples ofwhat Femandez (1986) has called "revelatory incidents";that is, tropes are played and images argued byconsumers in especially charged moments in humanrelationships which are pregnant with meaning.Femandez regards revelatory incidents as primary sourcesof insight in ethn ograph ic field work. Thes e incidentsinvolve dialogue and colloquialism, and are directly54 3

experienced by the researchers. Through these incidents,we can leam more about the personal, social and culturalsignificance of phenomena than would otherwise bepos s i b l e .Market Pitching As DiscourseMarket pitching is a variant of personal selling inwhich the sales encounter is govemed by a spiel or ascript designed to recruit and enrapture an audience tosuch a degree that its members are moved to purchase thetrader's products. Etymologically, "spiel" is related to"spell," and it functions as an incantation that inducescollaborative expectancy and a willing suspension of

disbelief. The conversion from spectator to participant toconsumer is accomplished through the pitch.The pitch is an ancient vehicle of information andimpression management, combining didacticism anddelight into a powerful rhetorical strategy. Braudel's(1979) description of the Parisienne Halles of thefourteenth through eighteenth centuries is replete withmarket cries ranging from simple declaration to

invective. Such cultural survivals or anachronisms remainentrenched in vehicles like nursery rhymes (e.g., "Hotcross buns"). The patter of contemporary traders such ascar salesmen is so familiar (one is tempted to sayarchetypal) to consumers that advertisers are able toincorporate it in a highly self-conscious, burlesquefashion into mass media messages. "Joe Isuzu" is socredible as the incredible salesman that his pitchreinforces the contradictory print message of thecommercial; further, his tag line ("You have my word onit") has been adopted by other commercial referencefigures unrelated to the original product. If the marketpitch is a hard sell, it is often enough tempered withtropes that both absorb the impact and deflect it to amore congenial realm of the consumer's experience.In their insightful ethnomethodological analysisof "patter merchanting," Pinch and Clark (1986)investigated several rhetorical formats and sellingtechniques in the routines of market pitchers in the U.K.and the Netherlands. By exploring the "informaleconomic reasoning" by which such traders manageconsumer preference, these authors show the ways inwhich "v;orth" versus "selling price" are contrasted in theconstituting of "bargains." A companion piece (Clarkand Pinch 1987) that explores compliance techniques andaudience response in microsociological perspectivedemonstrates further the merit of a close reading ofdiscourse recorded in situ. The same can be said of Prus'(1985) field study of price-setting activity.The emergence of discourse analysis (Van Djik1985a) as a viable subdisciplinc or cross-discipline is a

timely one for consumer researchers. In examininglanguage "in use," discourse analysis reveals the multiplelinks language has with the context of communicationand interaction; cognitive and social processes andstrategies, and the "contextualization" of discourse itself,become focal concems (Van Dijk 1985b,l). Existing asit does in the interstices of sociology, sociolinguisticsand ethnography (Van Dijk 1985c) these foci ofdiscourse analysis will shift in emphasi."! depending uponthe researcher's orientation. Thus, the one dimension,one method approach of the linguist orAdvances in Consumer Research

Volume IS, 1988


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544 / Market Pitchingethnomethodologist (e.g., Corsaro 1985) will differ fromthe broader, interdisciplinary concems of theanthropologist (e.g., Hymes 1 962). The former app roachyields reliable, generalizable results, the latter conceptualrichness and theoretical complexity (Van Dijk 1985c).Either approach is useful in consumer research, sincelanguage and consumption use-systems are mutuallycons t i tu t ing.

In his discussion of language as social practice.Fowler (1985) describes vocabulary as a "lexical map" ofthe preoccupations of a culture. Consumption, and byextension marketing, is one of our culturalpreoccupations (or cultural focus, in Hall 's (1959) terms).While our everyday speech is shot full of consumption-ese, this article is concemed most specifically with a"speech event" (Duranti 1985), that is, an interactiondefined by speech: market pitching. This event,embedded as it is in the polylogue of the marketplace(Sherry 1987c), is still marked as a distinct register, oras a ceremonial use of language. Argumentation(Kopperschmidt 1985), narrative analysis andconversational storytelling (Gulick and Quasthoff 1985,Polanyi 1985), and rumors and gossip (Fine 1985), arejust a few common marketplace speech genres - each ofwhich, in addition to others, can be detected in pitches -that have been explored from a discourse analyticperspective. Predictably, none has used consumption ormarketing as a precipitating speech environment. Asidefrom Woodside's (1984) application of discourse analysisto insurance sales encounters, this approach has notfiltered into consumer research.

Ethnography of SpeakingOf the variety of ways of interpreting discourse,the ethnography of speaking is especially useful inprobing the significance of market pitching. It isemployed in this study in a particular form that iscompatible with the researcher's interests. The approachis accorded no interpretive primacy. Rather, it isintroduced into the consumer research literature asanother item to be added to the methodological toolkit.Its comprehensive scope should prove especially usefulin assisting researchers to grasp the complexity ofconsumption phenomena, and in providing enthusiastswith a framework for inserting parallel approaches onissues from expansion (Labov and Fanshel 1977) toparalinguistics (Birdwhistell 1970, Hall 1959).

The basic tenets of the ethnography of speaking -also called the ethnography of communication - havebeen elaborated in a number of articles and books.Principal among these is work by Hymes (1962, 1964,1974), Hymes and Gumperz (1972), and Bauman andSherzer (1974, 1975). Subsequent work by Duranti(1985) has further enriched the approach. In the interestof enforced concision, the components and processes ofthis approach detailed below are paraphrased from thesesources. Ethnographers of speaking seek to determine thespeech codes and repertories of members of a speechcommunity, including the values, strategies and normswhich govem speech production and interpretation(Bauman and Sherzer 197 4). These ethnograph ers focuson a number of basic sociolingustic concepts: speechcommunities and events, elements of linguistic structure,repertoires, and codes. Ethnography is the preferredmethodological vehicle for such study. Because muchlanguage choice is subconscious, and because contextcritically determines the signalling of socialinformation, fieldwork techniques that elicit and

challenge the verbal skills of speakers are essential(Gumperz 1974). Field immersion and data collection insitu, rather than artificial laboratory manipulations, arethus required.In the development of his descriptive theory ofspeech behavior, Hymes (1962, 1972, 1974) hasproposed the acronym "SPEAKING" as a mnemonic toorganize the components that contribute to thecomplexity of verbal interaction. The eight foci ofHymes' analysis can be briefly reviewed. The situation iscomposed of a setting and a scene. Participants mayinclude a speaker/sender, an addressor, a hearer/audience,and an addressee. The ends toward which a speech eventunfolds are described in terms of purposes: outcomes andgoals . The ac t sequence of a performance includes bothmessage form and message content. Instrumentalitiesinvolved in communication include channels and formsof speech. Norms goveming communication coverinteraction as well as interpretation. Finally, genres ofevent are the categories to which particular performancescan be assigned.

As stated earlier, Hymes' framework can be usedfor ever greater elaboration of performance; its principalvalue resides in its comprehensiveness. In the balance ofthis article, I will employ the framework to interpret twospeech events embedded in a local system ofconsumption. Space limitations preclude an exhaustivetreatment of these events, but the analysis serves theprogrammatic ends of this article.

MethodologyThe data employed in this study derive from alarger corpus compiled by the Consumer BehaviorOdyssey, an interdisciplinary transcontinental teamresearch project, during the summer of 1986. Both thehistory and scope of the Odyssey have been detailedelsewhere (Belk 1987, Holbrook 1987 Kassarjian 1 987,Sherry 1987, Wallendorf 1987). So also have thenaturalistic paradigm and attendant data collectiontechniques that guided the project been meticulouslydescribed (Belk, Sherry and Wallendorf 1988; Belk,

Wallendorf and Sherry 1987). The entire data set isdeposited in an archive at the Marketing Science Institutein Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is available forinspection by consumer researchers.The data involving market pitching were collectedin a number of sites across the country: swap meets,boardwalks, retail outlets, auctions, fairs, revivalmeetings and assorted tourist attractions. For simplicity'ssake, I have elected to focus on a single venue todevelop this article. The analysis centers on materialgathered at the Rotundan Swap Meet in a suburb ofLaBrea, California. Data were collected throughparticipant observation and interview. Embeddedcollection and induced natural context approaches (Sherry1984) were employed. Data were recorded in field notesand joumals by several researchers, as well as by audio-and videotape and photograph. Since both swap meetvenue and naturalistic inquiry methods have beenconsidered at length elsewhere (Belk, Sherry andWallendorf 1988), no further elaboration of these issuesis provided.The Rotundan Swap Meet itself is an ethnicallydiverse open air market that is held in a defunct drive-intheatre. It is one of two such markets owned and managedby a local family. Rotundan managers conduct extensivecivic positioning in terms of public relations and peace-keeping within the community. Rotundan boasts a 465


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vendor cajiacity, and exhibits a distinctive daily rotationcycle in it", product assortment and rental schedule, suchthat available merchandise and type of consumer varieswidely throughout the week. Thousands of consumersmay be present on a given day. Musicians, jugglers andother entertainers create a festive atmosphere and help tobuild traffic. Vendors sell a variety of used and newgoods. Traditional retailers also rent booth space at themeet. Thun, a consumer is as likely to encounter a lyricalscript and an offer of a "free gift" from a pitchman at aSears credit application booth as he or she is theharangue of a "buU shit artist" (an emic term for barkeror salesperson) moving items from chamois to glasswarefrom Occupied Japan. So also is a range of social classesintermingled, from the upscale bargain hunters ofRosemary Hills to the destitute "scroungers" whoscavenge the merchandise jetisonned by vendors at day'send. Rotundan is a fascinating microcosm of the socialuniverse in which it is embedded.

From among the diverse assortment of marketpitches occurring at Rotundan, I have chosen twoperformances for extended consideration. The products inquestion are functional equivalents: a small, manualvegetable chopping appliance on the order of a Veg-o-matic. The consumer audiences to which the appeals aredirected ais also comparable, insofar as they arecomposed of shoppers strolling the same midway. Thevendors, however, differ significantly in terms ofethnicity and residence. One of the vendors ("The MiracleWorker") 3 a middle-aged midwestem white Americanmale who travels market circuits across the United States.The other vendor ("Chop Chop Chop"), a middle-agedKorean mrle who is a local resident, travels a much morerestricted market circuit.For purposes of discrete, linear exposition, thefollowing sections of this article examine speech eventsin the sequence proposed in Hymes' model. Because thisarticle was originally presented as a multimediaperformance, much of the richness of each speech eventis compromised in the reduction, especially asconstrained by present page limitations. What follows isan ethnographic overview of materials available toresearchers through the Odyssey Archive at MSI.

Speech Event I : The Miracle WorkerThe vendor's booth is sandwiched between stallscontaining a variety of new and used goods, on a crowdedmidway of the swap meet. It is a bright summeraftemoon, and consumers stroll unhurriedly down themany aisle:; of the open air market. The vendor'splatform is elevated several feet off the ground,permitting him to speak down (literally as well asfiguratively) to his audience. His table is filled withvegetables and props. The psychosocial occasion of thisperformance its cultural definition is the "demo."The demonstration is also likened to a "show." If thepatter is alleged to be a hard sell, it is tempered at leastby strains of amusement and diversion. This exists asone of hundreds of scenes through which consumersmove during their site visit.The vendor himself is a middle-aged Anglosporting sunglasses and a cowboy hat, in affectation ofperceived local canons of dress. The consumer clustertoward which he directs his pitch is composed of Whites,Asians, Hi.spanics and Blacks. While his principalobjective i;; to sell a $10.00 vegetable cutter toprospective customers, a number of ancillary objectivesare apparent. He uses his pitch to recruit an audience.

Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 15) 154 5literally distracting consumers from the cacophony of themidway, enticing them to focus upon his message. Theinformation and entertainment he provides to his clientbase are significant components of his ends.The act sequence of the vendor is arresting. Interms of form, he relies on a rising-then-fallingintonation pattem. Among the rhetorical tropesemployed most extensively are hyperbole andapostrophe. The content of the message is focussedprincipally on product attributes, convenience, andeconomy. The speech modalities invoked impart aspecial distinction to the message. The pitch ishumorous, and the humor is largely of a disparaging ordeprecating nature. Consumers are frequently the butt ofhis humor. The vendor adopts a conspiratorial tone,implicitly and explicitly promising to assist consumersin impression management; in fact, successful deceptionof significant others is one of the benefit bundlesconsistently touted. Finally, the vendor delivers hispitch in a perfunctory, detached, methodical manner. Theprecision and ease promised by the product are echoed inthe vendor's pitch, where the cadences are oftenclinically delivered.

Tlie instrumentalities in evidence are varied.Multiple channels are employed. The pitch itself isdelivered on an oral/aural level. The demonstration occursin a visual channel: vegetables, tools, rinse bowls andassorted props are manipulated to communicative ends. Asignboard behind the vendor's table serves to display hisproduct's name, and functions as a dart board of sorts thatpermits the vendor to toss vegetables sliced "as thin aspoker chips" up on permanent display. The pitch isdelivered in standard midwestem American English, withno code- or register-switching during the performance.The behaviors and proprieties attached tospeaking, and issues su:rrounding decoding are fairlytransparent in the vendor's pitch. Although following apracticed script, sufficient allowance is made forextemporizing. For example, the vendor engagesconsumers (individually, or as a rhetorical collective) inbanter and in ridicule throughout his pitch. He alsocommits several intentional "mistakes" in hispresentation, using self-effacing remarks to bond hisprospects more tightly to him. While implicitexpectations of all actors call for an uninterruptedperformance, punctuated interruption is in fact the norm.Some heckling and cross-talk emerges from the audience,with sotto voce argumentation and post-hoc criticismbeing common occurrences. Notions of tum-taking inconversational interaction prevail overall. Because thevendor is not a regional native, and because he travels atranscontinental market circuit, he employs a generic orfunctional language devoid of local resonance. Popularcultural references (for example, to soap operas) are asspecialized a use of language as the vendor permitshimself.

Of the speech genres employed by the vendor, thepitch is the predominant or overarching category.However a number of other subgenres combine to givehis pitch its distinguishiing characteristics. Principalamong these subgenres is the joke, and principal amongjoke themes is the disparaging of the consumer as buyer.If joking is construed as ritual behavior (Sherry 1980),then the topics of the vendor's jokes can be used asindices of social stress upon which his product ispositioned to have primary impact. Role expectations,time pressures, kith and kin relations and consumptionskill are a few of the topics of his joking interactions.


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546 / Market PitchingExtensive reliance upon comparative advertising makes itclear that formal comparison is an important subgenre ofpitch composition. Finally, proverbs and proverbialexpressions are important units of pitch composition.Comparison and admonition modulated through humor isa fair characterization of the vendor's genre development.

Speech Event H: Chop Chop ChopWhile this vendor's booth is also sandwiched

between the stalls of other vendors on a similarlycrowded midway, it differs in several respects from theone previously described. This booth is set up entirely atground level, with the vendor's table being the onlybarrier between him and his prospective customers. Inthis sense, he is on equal footing with his prospects.The vendor has erected an awning over his table. Thiscanopy provides shade for him and a number ofconsumers who have surrounded his stall. Hisperformance unfolds literally in the round, unlike theproscenium based performance of his competitor. Thecultural definition of the speech event is identical to theone just d escribed: "dem o" couched as "show."The vendor in the present event is a middle-agedKorean male. He is dressed in a casual westcoast style,but as will become clear, his apparel is more

semiotically significant than that of his competitor. Theconsumer cluster he has recruited is quite similar to thatof his competitor, with the exception of a greaterproportion of blacks. In terms of ends, the goals andoutcomes of the Korean vendor are similar to his Anglocounterpart, with one significant exception: the Koreanvendor closes more sales. Whether this is attributable toprice, performance or some permutation remains to beconsidered.The act sequence of the Korean vendor is every bitas arresting as that of his Anglo counterpart. The form ofspeech preferred by this vendor is a staccato shout,modulated intermittentiy by a chant. The pitch is ahybrid of soliloquoy and stichomythia, with therhetorical question forming the basis of what isessentially a lecture. Message content centers on product

attributes, but in contrast to the competition, focuses aswell on issues of health and utility. These are importantpositioning differences that arise from the vendor'scultural values system and his reading of Americanlifeways, as much as from business strategy.The "key" component of this speech event differsmarkedly from the first. The Korean vendor is veryserious in demeanor, and his performance is quitepainstaking. He has a vigorous, animated style,conducting his demo with a flourish. His languagebecomes part of the slicing, dicing, cutting procedure hedemonstrates, the words and cadences of his patter asmuch a cutting instrument as the implement itself. Hisstyle is quite personalized, despite the fixity of thescript. Perhaps the best way to characterize the modalityof his pitch is to call it ingratiating. The vendor bondshis audience with the gift of his performance. He is aseager to perform well as he is to close the sale.Instrumentalities evident in the second pitch arequite distinct as well. Again, the pitch itself is deliveredon oral and aural levels. Visually, however, this speechevent is far more evocative than its counterpart. Whilethe same demonstration props are evident (albeitmanipulated more dexterously), additional props areemployed to create a hotter semiotic environment. Thevendor wears a roll-up cap to which is attached a buttonwhich proclaims "I love Chop Chop Chop." This same

logo is emblazoned in larger letters across his T-shirt.Framed newspaper clippings attesting to the vendor'slocal celebrity are attached to the awning struts of hisstall. Consumers familiar with his performance throughlocal mass media or from having seen it in other openair markets refer to the vendor himself as "Chop Chop."Speech forms themselves are also distinct from thosepresent in the pitch described earlier. The Koreanvendor's heavily accented American English is both atactical and unintentional source of much of the humor ofthe pitch. The incongruity (some of it staged, as befitsproper showmanship) of the persona and the accent givesthe performance much of its power. The colloquial use ofAmerican English (the pitch is replete with idiomaticexpressions such as "loolcing good!" and "I gotta go")contributes to this effect. Furthermore, the Korean vendoris adept at code switching, delivering parts of his pitchin English, Spanish and Chinese; relevant targets areacknowledged and complimented, while the audience as awhole is delighted.

Interaction and interpretation norms are alsosufficiently different from the first pitch as to warrantcomment. The Korean vendor's script is rigid and permitsno extemporizing or adhoc interplay with the audience.An uninterrupted performance is expected and delivered.No heckling occurs during the pitch, and the cross-talkamong the audience is entirely supportive. Calls of"Yeah Chop Chop!" or "Go Chop Chop!" are common.In fact, the presence of a larger coterie of blackconsumers produces an interesting synergy with thevendor's presentation style. One black consumer beginsan antiphonal, overlapping call and response-typecommentary in support of the pitch, much like thespeech form that would be expected during a liturgicalservice. Because the vendor is a "local" (despite orbecause of his ethnicity) he is able to use languagestrategically to target his prospective customers in a waythat the non-native vendor does not. Such effectivelinguistic targeting may contribute to the vendor'ssuccessful closing rate.

Finally, the genre of this second speech event isstill the pitch, but the subgenres undergirding it differnoticeably from the first. The Korean vendor's pitch isprimarily a lecture, peppered with colloquial expressions.While joking occurs, it is less formal than that of thecounterpart pitch, and consumers, when criticized, aredisparaged for their dietary pattems rather than theirshopping acumen. The length of the pitch is half that ofAnglo vendor's; the Korean vendor's performance is morestylized and yet less rhetorically elaborate than that ofhis competitor .A Note on Dramatic Shape

Space limitations prompt a reductionistinterpretive summary at this juncture. In one speechevent, a non-native (i.e., non-local) vendor delivers alengthy, rhetorically elaborate, precise but interactive,humorous pitch for an implement positioned as aneconomical and convenient labor saving tool. In asecond speech event, a native (i.e., local) vendor deliversa shorter, tightiy scripted, paralinguistically elaborate,impassioned and strategically incongruous pitch for aproduct positioned as a quasi-medical instrument. Theformer is a distanced exhortation to buy; the latter is ananimated lecture encouraging purchase. The Anglo vendormakes relatively few sales of his (relatively expensive)product compared to those of his competitor. In each


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Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 15) 154 7

Element

Table 1Dramatic Structure of Speech EventsVendor

Init iationRising Action

ClimaxDenouementCloseConclusionResult

The Miracle WorkerRecruit audience5 (Demo joke comp)

2 (Price gift joke focus)(Gift price reduc exhort)(Gift joke)Disperse audienceSingle Purchase

Chop Chop ChopRecruit audience3 (Am deficit remedial lect)3 (Serial demo prod benefits)(Am deficit)(Price gift price)(Price increase)Release audienceMultiple purchase

case, the audience has received an intangible gift whichwill ostensibly pay dividends for the vendor-performer.Tha dramatic shape of these speech events remainsto be con;;idered. This dramatic shape I take to be theritual subr.tratum of the pitch. Based upon an analysis oftranscripts; (verbatims are not provided due to spacelimitation), the structures indicated in Table 1 emerge.Clearly, ritual beginnings and endings, formulaicrepetition, and progressive movement are apparent at thefundamental level of the market pitch.Th3 Anglo vendor relies heavily on repetitivejokes and comparisons to other products, services andcompanies to build audience involvement. The Koreanvendor prefers to reveal American problems, offersolutions, and repeatedly extol product benefits whileconducting his demonstration to engage his prospects. Ineach case, the pitch climaxes with the announcement ofprice and the offer of an incentive gift. The Anglovendor us3s the gift as a stimulus to additionalpitchwork, while the Korean vendor simply rests hiscase. The pricing strategy employed by each dealer isinstructive. Whereas the Anglo dealer announces a pricereduction and a doubling of his incentive, the Koreanvendor actually raises his price marginally to compensatehimself for the show. The former vendor literally

disperses his audience, actually antagonizing some of themere "lookers." The latter vendor releases his audience,which presumably has become enthralled, and thanksconsumen; for "watching" his "show." Note the lack of afalling action in the Korean vendor's pitch. His closecomes abruptly after the climax, while his competitorretums consumers more gradually to the other delightsand temptations of the midway.As a primarily descriptive exercise, this articlemalees no attempt to frame generalizable propositionsabout market pitching efficacy. Rather, the datacontained in i s article are presented as baselineethnography against which future studies of pitching maybe positioned. Within space limitations imposed byproceedings, I have tried to illustrate the utility of athick description of consumption phenomena. Clearly,

much additional detailed work is required before ourunderstanding of market pitching can becomecomprehens ive .Conclusion

In this article I have attempted to accomplish twoobjectives. First of all, I have drawn attention to acuriously neglected commercial art form every bit asfascinatin;; as its mass media analogs: the market pitch.Secondly, I have used patter merchanting as a vehicle forintroducing into the consumer research literature a

comprehensive framework for the interpretation of buyerand seller communication: the ethnography of speaking.The use of naturalistic inquiry methodology and thechoice of a venue with significant ethnic diversitycontributed further to the programmatic goals of thisarticle. The rise of informal retailing, the increasingsignificance of direct marketing, the acceleratingfragmentation of the domestic mass market and a numberof other consumption trends make it clear thatresearchers must return their attention to fundamentalmarket mechanisms if our understanding of consumerbehavior is to deepen appreciably. The pitch and theopen-air market are two such fundamental mechanisms.The long term prospects of an ethnographicapproach to commercial speech events are theoreticallyand practically significant. Comparative analysis ofthickly described sales encounters captured in multiplemedia that preserve contextual and paralinguistic featuresof performance will permit more comprehensivemodelling of the sales encounter. The effectiveness ofthe pitch can be evaluated by factors other than mereprice manipulation, such as rhetorical virtuosity,information disclosure, or even social class.Conceivably, even more effective promotional patoismight be generated through such analysis. Perhaps the

most significant contribution of a detailed investigationof patter merchanting would be the impact outside thediscipline of consumer research itself. The study of aconsumption phenomenon as an extraeconomic event an art form, a performance, etc. would be of value toscholars in folklore, anthropology, sociology,communication, and marketing.[References available from author]


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