Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 59

Martha Stewart and e-commerce

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interactions of the marketplace may serve not to empower these participants. The
interactions may disenfranchise the women shopping at the Martha Stewart
marketplace. In order to understand how this may be happening, it is necessary to
become more familiar with the Martha Stewart marketplace.

Exploiting the Illusion of Mediated Interpersonal Communication

The Martha Stewart Web site is part of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
(MSLO). Martha Stewart is chair and C.E.O. of MSLO. MSLO is comprised of
M artha Stew art Livings a monthly magazine; M artha Stew art Living (MSL), a
syndicated television show; www.marthastewart.com, a Web site; askM artha, a
daily syndicated radio show; “askMartha,” a syndicated newspaper column; “From
Martha’s Kitchen,” a Food Network cable television show; “Martha by Mail,” a
mail-order catalog company; and the Martha Stewart books. MSLO is also engaged
in several strategic partnerships in retail sales. These partnerships provide the public
with opportunities to buy paint and bed and bath products.
Analysis reveals that the marketing strategy at www.marthastewart.com taps
into “the myth of the old-fashioned idealized store and relationship, in which
customer and salesperson were united in formal courtship, in which greetings,
awareness of product, and the illusion of friendship were part of the exchange of
goods” (Drucker and Gumpert 132). Drucker and Gumpert contend that this
interpersonal relationship “remained a necessity until the rise of media shopping
options offered the possibility of procurement in privacy” (120).
Representing the epitome of marketing strategy, MSLO has transformed the
salesperson, the shopkeeper, into the marketplace. “Martha Stewart the person is
Martha Stewart the brand” (Conlon, Brewer, Delleave, and Yarbrough 148). Martha
Stewart, describing her marketing strategy, claims, “I try to treat them (consumers)
like my friend and colleague, and it works if they feel involved” (Conlon, Brewer,
Delleave and Yarbrough 148). Martha Stewart, wizard of www.marthastewart.com,
guides her “friends” to her Web store and tells them what they want or need to buy.
The visitor to www.marthastewart.com is able to procure goods in privacy.
This shopping experience is facilitated by the parasocial relationship (Horton and
Wohl 185) between the visitor and Martha Stewart. The strategies of parasocial
interaction are employed “to lure the attention of the audience” (189) and to
“highlight the chief values stressed in such ‘personality’” (190) performances.
Mediated interpersonal communication provides the basis for MSLO’s
exploitation of the illusion of interpersonal mediated communication. Interpersonal
mediated communication is interactive communication between participants. A
medium, such as a telephone or computer, substitutes for the face-to-face aspect of
interpersonal communication. The MSLO staff uses one-way messages, designed
to appear as personalized messages, to create the illusion of interpersonal mediated