Marketing Semiotics: Company Profile - Laura Oswald, Ph.D. Professional Biography

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Marketing Semiotics - Depth Research for Powerful Brands

Professional Biography

Laura Oswald, Ph.D. is director of Marketing Semiotics Inc. Dr. Oswald is an expert in the areas of brand strategy, consumer research, and semiotics – a branch of anthropology devoted to understanding the ways signs and symbols shape culture. She conducts consumer studies in a variety of formats, including focus groups, in-depth interviews and on-site ethnographies in North America, Europe and the Far East. Her qualitative research consulting practice and her academic career encompass a variety of application areas, including automotive, cosmetics, food, entertainment, electronics, retailing, health care, corporate culture and public policy. Fluent in French, Dr. Oswald is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, De Paul University, and a member of the advisory board of the Yaffe Center for Persuasive Communication at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. In the fall of 2003 Dr. Oswald was a Senior Teaching Fellow at Nanyang Technological University School of Business, in Singapore.

Before starting her own business, Dr. Oswald taught film criticism, popular culture and semiotics at Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Illinois, Chicago, and brings practical business experience to the classroom. She has published a book on film spectating and semiotics, The Semiotics of Performance, and numerous articles on film theory, consumer behavior, public policy, semiotics and culture, and presented papers at scholarly conferences. In addition to her consulting practice, she continues to write and give seminars on current issues in consumer research and advertising, at meetings of the Association for Consumer Research, the American Marketing Association, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, and the American Sociological Association.

Dr. Oswald holds a bachelors degree from Northwestern University, a Masters Degree in Cinema Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a Ph.D. from New York University, majoring in cultural anthropology, semiotics, and language. She did doctoral research with Christian Metz at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, She is a member of the Association for Consumer Research, the Semiotic Society of America, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, and the American Marketing Association, and speaks on semiotics, consumer research and advertising at annual conferences. She is also a marathon runner.

Dr. Oswald has been recipient of the Senior Research Fellowship in marketing at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, a New York University Teaching Fellowship, the French Government Scholarship for study in France, and a Summer Research Fellowship at Harvard University from the National Endowment for the Humanities.