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Pilgrimage involves the movement of people either as individuals or as groups in search of what can be described as the sacred. Since pilgrimage is an integral part of Indian culture and has significant participation, pilgrimage sites and centres are being used by political and corporate organisations to communicate specific messages. The political relevance of religion in our contemporary world cannot be disputed, particularly in the context of a growing consumerist culture and the divisive tactics of most political organisations. In such a scenario, pilgrimage traditions and centres are periodically taken over by political groups. As a particular pilgrimage tradition evolves, sacred sites become formalised into organised socio-political systems with economic overtones. Pilgrimage sites and traditions, both old and new, are promoted through various tools of the mass media, including newspaper articles, television and radio programmes, cinema, tourism literature or advertising campaigns created by private entities as well as government agencies. Looking through the prism of mass media, this paper analyses the new dimensions of pilgrimage that are being created; whether the focus is shifting from the sacred to the secular and then to the social; and how the issues of community and gender are being expressed through pilgrimage-related communication. My perspective is that of a mass media professional who is also an ordinary pilgrim and a solo woman traveller. The paper is not based on strict academic research, but rather on personal encounters and journalistic observations.

Abstract
Understanding consumers' ways of thinking can help identify strategies to limit brand damage and elicit more favorable reactions from disapproving consumers. Analytic thinkers' beliefs about a brand are diluted when they see negative information; those of holistic thinkers remain unaffected. While both analytic and holistic thinkers blame the brand equally for quality and manufacturing problems, holistic thinkers are more likely to blame contextual factors outside of the brand than analytic thinkers. This ability of holistic thinkers to focus on the outside context is the reason why their brand beliefs are not diluted.
State-of-the-art crisis management should be proactive vis-à-vis potentially negative events. Crisis communications that highlight contextual factors as triggers of negative incidents offer a powerful mechanism to restrict brand damage. Additionally, elaborational messages that clarify the nature of the brand extension can curb negative thoughts from analytic consumers and boost their responses.

Abstract
Consumers evaluate brand extensions by judging how well they fit with the parent brand. We examine this process across cultures. We predict that consumers from Eastern cultures, characterized by holistic thinking, perceive higher brand extension fit and evaluate brand extensions more favorably than do Western consumers, characterized by analytic thinking. Study 1 supports the existence of these cultural differences, with study 2 providing support for styles of thinking (analytic vs. holistic) as the drivers of cultural differences in brand extension evaluations.