Marketing identities on Nestlé's websites

This study addresses issues of identity construction in a globalised market on the part of an international corporation – Nestlé – through the analysis of its Italian, UK, US and South African websites. By its very nature, the company’s main business – food and beverages – lends itself to multiple, and possibly widely diversified, representations, especially in a cross-cultural perspective, because of the complex nexus of relationships existing between food, identity and culture. Parallel to this cross-cultural focus, the investigation also takes a more critical perspective centred on the construction of corporate identity in relation to ethical concerns. The results of the analysis show that the strategies of self-presentation enacted by Nestlé are adaptive to the local publics which they address, with self-legitimating arguments addressing ethical issues also being differently structured as a function of the cultural contexts they are embedded in.