Search

In a controversial context, luxury houses have followed the ancestral values of artisanal production, with respect for materials, the environment, and people, thereby facilitating their current application of the principles promoted by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). They used to publish their CSR results in their annual reports and via their websites but can also do it implicitly through their advertisements. For the first time, the advertising creation and decoding process together with a semiotic analysis of two Louis Vuitton and Hermes advertisements bring out the semiotic wealth of the discourse of the images and the identity narratives of each label, as well as listing the implicit identity values of luxury and linking them to the various principles of CSR. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Although each curist (hydrothermal patient) spends an average of 500 €, for 18 days of intensive cure (treatment), Thermalism is in France one billion € of turnover. Famous since ancient Greco-Roman, treatments through Thermalism attracts today some 500 000 followers. Presently, French Social Security takes in charge an important rate (65%) of the expenditure incurred by the medically prescribed thermalism treatments , which certainly has encouraged its development. Despite being regarded by some people as old-fashioned and whose target consumers are elderly, thermalism attract each year 17% new thermal curists, many of whom are young adults. Teens and children also benefit from new technologies and therapeutic thermalism. The hydrothermal patients spend annually around one billion € in French Thermalism : a financial manna that France is willing to protect at all costs, especially in the current context of economic and financial crisis and economic, labor and thermal globalization.

Nowadays, Medical Tourism (MT) greatly develops, has received public reputation and becomes a new Tourist niche. Nevertheless, MT is still a badly known and not sufficiently studied phenomenon. MT represents 2 % of the world Tourism and 4 % of the hospital admissions in the world: it generates a 100 billion € fallout engendered by 20 million of medical tourists (Mt). The MT is appealed to develop considering the growing life expectation and the technological and medical surgical progress. It is other globalization effect and come within the framework of Social Security (SS) deficits and of reorganization of the public and private health systems in many countries. The challenge will be how to improve the quality (of the care)/price (reduced) ratio without falling in the drift of a two-speed SS medicine. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the MT concerning the patients, the country suppliers and the receiving countries.