Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 67

Martha Stewart and e-commerce

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consumers. The first implication is not site specific. The diminished opportunity
for interpersonal interaction serves to isolate the consumer and creates a greater
gap between the elite participants of the on-line shopping experience and those
who are not able to participate.
The second implication is exemplified by the Martha Stewart Web site. The
staff of MSLO has designed this site to mimic mediated interpersonal
communication. Trading on the fact that Martha Stewart is the brand, a kind of
parasocial interaction is set in motion. What is unique, or atypical, is that this
interaction is initiated by the media persona rather than the audience member.
MSLO uses parasocial interaction to its own economic advantage.
A site-specific implication of the on-line shopping experience via
www.marthastewart.com is that Martha Stewart is using the appeal to nostalgia as
a marketing device. Implied by the very nature of the MSLO product line is the
notion that no home is a home without these products. Consumption in this instance
is not the buying of the latest gadgets, but buying the products essential to making
your house a home.
The implications of on-line shopping at the Martha By Mail Web store take on
special significance when the nature of MSLO is examined. MSLO represents
what Joseph Turow calls “the optimal mixture of organizational breadth and depth”
(683) or a synergistic organization. “Synergy means the coordination of parts of a
company so that the whole actually turns out to be worth more than the sum of its
parts acting alone, without helping one another” (Turow 683). Today, as more and
more media options fragment the existing audience, mass media conglomerates
use synergistic strategies to maintain and build total audience share. Indeed, Barnet
claims that to control the market, organizations must increase the level of vertical
and horizontal integration (27-28).
The female consumer in the Martha Stewart marketplace may well find herself
ensnared in the strategies of this synergistic organization; each media channel
strategically reinforcing the marketing message rather than providing an array of
marketing messages. Sharon Patrick, MSLO president, concisely describes the
synergistic strategies of MSLO, “We are in control of design, development,
packaging, signage. . .that’s all part of brand maintenance and preservation”
(Fellman 32).
These implications are exacerbated by the fact that MSLO is a synergistic
organization. Indeed, the MSLO staff counts themselves “fortunate” due to the
fact that “driving traffic to our site (www.marthastewart.com) is easier through
cross-promotions from our daily television and radio shows and from ads in Martha
Stewart Living” (Spence 27). The focus in this mediated communication experience
is not on interaction, but on transaction.
The purpose of www.marthastewart.com is described by Deborah Spence,