Opentable as a marketing strategy for modern Muslim funeral product in Indonesia

Purpose The Opentable strategy is considered a taboo because of its ability to take advantage of peoples’ grief. Therefore, this study aims to explore the Opentable (Exhibition) as a marketing strategy for modern Muslim funeral products, considered a luxury by most people in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative research with a phenomenological approach used to collect data from six Memorial Advisors (MAs) through interviews. Findings The result showed that the Opentable strategy was carried out to introduce the concept of a modern Muslim funeral home and its products. Furthermore, MA does not encourage sales during Opentable, rather, it uses the process to obtain complete data from potential customers. Practical implications This research serves as a guidance for MA and other similar professions to socialize products uncommon or considered taboo in society. It also provides a repertory of new marketing strategies, especially for targeted and uncommon products. Originality/value To the best of the knowledge, this is the first research to explore Opentable (Exhibition) as a marketing strategy for modern Muslim funeral products in Indonesia. Therefore, future research is needed on other marketing strategies.

Exiled Bodies and Funeral Homes in Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>Within the hidden space of the embalmer's room the most abject of objects comes to rest. Embalming rooms, and the funeral homes that house them, are liminal zones, and the dead and decaying bodies that come to occupy them are, for many outside the funeral service industry, objects and spaces of mystification. Situated within contradictory discourses, the dead body is understood as an object/subject to be revered, whilst at the same time bringing to the living a degree of discomfort and fear. The body's decomposition reminds us that nothing can bring the dead back, thus representing the ultimate human fear - one's inevitable annihilation. It is therefore deemed necessary to remove this destabilising object/subject to a safe and contained space. This thesis opens up and explores such a space: the contemporary funeral home, with particular attention given to the principles and practices of embalming rooms, as these rooms represent possibly the most abject space of the funeral home. In doing so it excavates the historical, social and cultural constructs that have come to underpin contemporary funeral service provision and embalming practices, uncovering the various intrinsic dualisms that operate within the spaces of the funeral home - such as the public/private, contaminated/contained, life/death, inside/outside. The central question of the thesis asks: what can an exploration of the abject spaces and bodies of the funeral home in Aotearoa New Zealand offer to understandings about embodied geographies? For even as many geographers increasingly challenge the marginalisation of certain bodies and the spaces they inhabit, little attention is given to the dead body. Employing primarily the theoretical perspectives of emotional/psycho-geography and feminist geography, the thesis brings a reading of the ways in which death, decaying bodies, and the spaces within which they are separated, marginalised, and othered come to be understood by those within the funeral industry, and thus those who utilise its services. These theoretical approaches also challenge many of the dichotomies that form a major basis for the justification of contemporary funeral practices such as embalming. Through interviews with a variety of key stakeholders in both the traditional and alternative funeral sectors in Aotearoa New Zealand, and close readings of funeral industry texts, it is found that the dead body, embedded within totalising discourses on death, and contained and closeted away in the back rooms of funeral homes, is forced to undergo extensive, invasive practices that sanitise and transform it in order to eradicate any obvious traces that it is now a dead body. In the spaces of the funeral home the material and symbolic manifestations of death are continually regulated, contained, and referred to euphemistically, all the while retaining clear distinctions between what has been constructed as sacred and profane, public and private, clean and unclean. Ultimately, it is the contention of this thesis that the liminal spaces of the funeral home preserve certain knowledges and practices that ensure that the contemporary Westernbased funeral industry retains a monopoly over the bodies of the dead.</p>

Exiled Bodies and Funeral Homes in Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>Within the hidden space of the embalmer's room the most abject of objects comes to rest. Embalming rooms, and the funeral homes that house them, are liminal zones, and the dead and decaying bodies that come to occupy them are, for many outside the funeral service industry, objects and spaces of mystification. Situated within contradictory discourses, the dead body is understood as an object/subject to be revered, whilst at the same time bringing to the living a degree of discomfort and fear. The body's decomposition reminds us that nothing can bring the dead back, thus representing the ultimate human fear - one's inevitable annihilation. It is therefore deemed necessary to remove this destabilising object/subject to a safe and contained space. This thesis opens up and explores such a space: the contemporary funeral home, with particular attention given to the principles and practices of embalming rooms, as these rooms represent possibly the most abject space of the funeral home. In doing so it excavates the historical, social and cultural constructs that have come to underpin contemporary funeral service provision and embalming practices, uncovering the various intrinsic dualisms that operate within the spaces of the funeral home - such as the public/private, contaminated/contained, life/death, inside/outside. The central question of the thesis asks: what can an exploration of the abject spaces and bodies of the funeral home in Aotearoa New Zealand offer to understandings about embodied geographies? For even as many geographers increasingly challenge the marginalisation of certain bodies and the spaces they inhabit, little attention is given to the dead body. Employing primarily the theoretical perspectives of emotional/psycho-geography and feminist geography, the thesis brings a reading of the ways in which death, decaying bodies, and the spaces within which they are separated, marginalised, and othered come to be understood by those within the funeral industry, and thus those who utilise its services. These theoretical approaches also challenge many of the dichotomies that form a major basis for the justification of contemporary funeral practices such as embalming. Through interviews with a variety of key stakeholders in both the traditional and alternative funeral sectors in Aotearoa New Zealand, and close readings of funeral industry texts, it is found that the dead body, embedded within totalising discourses on death, and contained and closeted away in the back rooms of funeral homes, is forced to undergo extensive, invasive practices that sanitise and transform it in order to eradicate any obvious traces that it is now a dead body. In the spaces of the funeral home the material and symbolic manifestations of death are continually regulated, contained, and referred to euphemistically, all the while retaining clear distinctions between what has been constructed as sacred and profane, public and private, clean and unclean. Ultimately, it is the contention of this thesis that the liminal spaces of the funeral home preserve certain knowledges and practices that ensure that the contemporary Westernbased funeral industry retains a monopoly over the bodies of the dead.</p>

Loyalitas Konsumen dalam Penggunaan Jasa Rumah Duka (Studi Kasus pada Rumah Duka Jelambar)

This study discusses consumer loyalty in the use of funeral home services. The theory used in this research is the theory of consumer loyalty, word of mouth theory, promotion theory, and service theory. This research uses a case study method with a qualitative descriptive research approach. The data in this study were obtained from 1 staff member and 5 (five) users of funeral home services. Funeral home services are usually used by Chinese Buddhists, Confucians, Christians and Catholics. Funeral homes don't really do marketing promotions, such as price discounts, advertisements, social media activations, and so on. Initially people know and can use the funeral home services through word of mouth. In addition, the area where they live is also close to the location of the funeral home. After using a funeral home service, they are satisfied with the service provided, so they will use the same funeral home service if needed. Because of the use of more than 1 (one) time, consumers can be said to be loyal or loyal. Consumer loyalty can be seen from their willingness to give recommendations (word of mouth) of funeral homes that they use to others. The conclusion of this study, one form of consumer loyalty is in the form of word of mouth. The location and services provided are some of the considerations underlying the funeral home consumer loyalty in this study. Penelitian ini membahas mengenai loyalitas konsumen dalam penggunaan jasa rumah duka. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah teori loyalitas konsumen, teori word of mouth, teori promosi, dan teori service atau pelayanan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode studi kasus dengan pendekatan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Data dalam penelitian ini diperoleh dari 1 satu orang staf dan 5 (lima) orang pengguna jasa rumah duka. Jasa rumah duka biasanya digunakan oleh masyarakat Tionghoa beragama Buddha, Konghucu, Kristen, dan Katolik. Rumah duka tidak terlalu melakukan promosi pemasaran, seperti potongan harga, memasang iklan, pengaktifan sosial media, dan lainnya. Awalnya orang mengetahui dan dapat menggunakan jasa rumah duka melalui word of mouth. Selain itu, daerah tempat tinggal mereka juga dekat dengan lokasi rumah duka. Setelah menggunakan jasa rumah duka, mereka merasa puas akan service atau pelayanan yang diberikan sehingga mereka akan menggunakan jasa rumah duka yang sama apabila membutuhkan. Karena penggunaan lebih dari 1 (satu) kali, konsumen dapat dikatakan setia atau loyal. Loyalitas konsumen dapat dilihat dari kesediaan mereka akan memberikan rekomendasi (word of mouth) rumah duka yang mereka gunakan kepada orang lain. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini, salah satu bentuk loyalitas konsumen adalah dalam bentuk word of mouth. Lokasi dan pelayanan yang diberikan merupakan beberapa pertimbangan yang melatarbelakangi loyalitas konsumen rumah duka pada penelitian ini.

Remote certification of out-of-hospital deaths in a Canadian Province: An 8-year experience of a novel practice

Introduction: Certification of out-of-hospital deaths is challenging as physicians are often unavailable at the scene. In these situations, emergency medical services will generally transport the decedent to the nearest hospital. In 2011, a remote death certification program was implemented in the province of Québec, Canada. The program was managed through an online medical control center and enabled death certification by a remote physician. We sought to evaluate the implementation and feasibility of the remote death certification program and to describe the challenges we experienced. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed all remote death certification requests received at the online medical control center between 2011 and 2019. Data were collected from the online medical control center database and records. Feasibility was determined by evaluating the remote death certification rate. Results: Overall, 84.1% of remote death certification requests were realized, producing a total of 9776 death certificates. Male decedents accounted for 61.5% of remote death certification requests and were more likely than females to undergo a coroner’s investigation for cause of death (36.3% vs 20.8%, p = 0.017). Urban/mixed regions had higher rates of achieved remote death certifications (mean 87.3% vs 76.9%, p = 0.033) and putrefied bodies (mean 3.8% vs 2.2%, p = 0.137) compared to rural regions. Among unrealized remote death certification requests, the most common reason was failure of relatives to designate a funeral home (36.8%). Conclusion: Our 8-year experience with the remote death certification program demonstrates that despite facing numerous challenges, this process is feasible and offers a valuable option to manage out-of-hospital deaths. The remote death certification program is spreading in the remaining regions of Québec. Future studies will aim to quantify how much time this process saves for emergency medical services in each region of the province.

African American Deathways

This bibliography on African American deathways examines the role of death, dying, and disposal from a variety of different perspectives. Studies focusing on the intersection between death and history survey a wide range of materials, ranging from general histories that contextualize the importance of death culture to more specific studies of prominent burial grounds and cemeteries. Scholars focusing on cemeteries and material culture tend to highlight the importance of burial customs in African American remembrance and mourning, while also examining some of the intellectual divides that archaeological excavations of these cemeteries have created. Additionally, many burial customs and traditions retained markers of identity tying them to West African traditions and pan-African identity, in general. Cemeteries function as signifiers of belonging and exclusivity, with many cemeteries in North America either segregated or unmarked. Cremation, on the other hand, remains a less popular form of disposal in a culture with a deep respect for embodied funeral traditions, even though it is a far more affordable option than burial. Regarding the economic dimension of African American deathways, studies of the funeral home industry highlight its role as a nexus for cementing cultural identity in the African American community, since, historically, funeral homes were one of the few businesses that blacks were allowed and encouraged to run without interference from the white community. The funeral home thus became an important center for commerce, building equity, funding education, creating political action, and providing infrastructural support, causing the funeral home business to prosper. Similarly, funerary traditions often formed an important part of African American culture, and the body was, and remains, the locus of funerary traditions, often with long wakes (in which families and friends sit with the body telling stories and remembering the deceased), and equally long funeral processions, in which entire communities come to pay respect to the dead. Recent research on the dying experience among African Americans reveals disparities between whites and communities of color, with unequal access to medical care and a history of gross abuse and experimentation by medical professionals. Those studies focusing on mourning and culture tend to address larger cultural frameworks of death from a qualitative perspective, while gender-critical analyses of African American deathways examine the role of women and LGBT folk in the funeral business. Unfortunately, like many businesses, women’s roles were diminished as the industry professionalized and men became the primary faces of the business, while death studies in general remained heteronormative in its focus. Finally, the political dimension of death represents a significant area of research within African American death studies. These works examine the politics of mourning and the ways in which death and mourning create agency for the African American community. Death, funerals, and a politics of mourning were all essential to political movements in the United States, and evidenced through collective responses found in both the anti-lynching movement and the civil rights movement. More recently, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has highlighted the continued killing and spectacle of black bodies, and can be viewed as a powerful contemporary resistance against the ongoing oppression of people of color in the United States.

Black Deaths Matter Earning the Right to Live: Death and the African-American Funeral Home

Black Deaths Matter: Earning the Right to Live—Death and the African-American Funeral Home recounts the history of black funeral homes in the United States and their role in demanding justice for bodies of color and the black community. Through funeral pageantry and vigilant support for local communities, the African American funeral home has been central to ensuring that not only do Black Lives Matter, but black deaths count and are visible to the larger community. This paper is a slightly expanded version of the plenary talk for the Centre for Death and Society’s Politics of Death Conference at the University of Bath on 9 June 2018. This research and talk were supported by The Louisville Institute under the Project Grant for Researchers.