New Directions in International Advertising Research

Citation

de Mooij, M. (2003), "New Directions in International Advertising Research", International Marketing Review, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 678-680. https://doi.org/10.1108/02651330310505259

This book offers articles about various advertising related topics, but few that really cover new directions in international advertising research. It starts promisingly with two articles on methodological issues in cross‐country research. The first one is by the international advertising scholar Gordon Miracle with Hae‐Kyong Bang and covers translation problems in comparative content analysis. This is useful, but not new, as mentioned by Taylor in the introduction: “a disproportionately high number of content analyses have been published”. The second study by Michael Ewing et al. covers a new direction, trying to develop a psychometrically robust and cross‐culturally generalizable measure of viewers’ responses to standardized television commercials. The scale was validated on samples of Australian students and ethnic Chinese students of Southeast Asian origin.

The next set of articles covers the standardization versus specialization debate. They provide useful reviews of the literature on the debate, but some outdated examples do not add to credibility. An example is the mention of “Coke utilizing a truly global strategy”, whereas most readers will know that in 2000 Coca‐Cola changed their standardization strategy and decentralized its marketing and communications. One of the standardization‐specialisation articles takes a new approach, tackling the non‐universality of marketing/advertising concepts. It sums up many nice examples of ethnocentricity of American textbooks adapted for non‐US markets, but ends with the not well‐elaborated global‐local discussion, again, including a 1987 Coca‐Cola example.

Further sets of articles are about a variety of topics about advertising in Poland and the Czech Republic, country‐of‐origin (COO) effects in the USA, environmental information in English speaking and culturally similar countries (Australia, South Africa, the UK and the USA), agency‐client relations in Korea and a study on information content of advertising by Australian, Japanese and US firms in Australia. A stray topic covered by one article is the digital divide, an analysis of the distribution of the Internet across developed and developing countries.

The Polish study by De Pelsmacker et al. tests hypotheses on the effects of emotional and rational appeals on attitudes towards ads and brands and purchase intentions as well as the effects of positive or negative contexts of ads in Poland. The hypotheses are based on prior studies, which are reviewed in the article, but no information is given on the nationality of the respondents in the studies reviewed. If this knowledge were made available, the results of the measurement in Poland would have been more interesting. For example, in contrast to earlier studies, in this Polish study, the attitude towards ads and brands, the purchase intention of brands, and recall are more positive as a result of the exposure to emotional ads than to rational ads. One would like to know which audiences would react in a different way.

A study by Taylor et al. in the Czech Republic assesses the cultural aspects of Czech advertising based on an exploratory survey and in‐depth interviews with students. Conclusions are that Czech advertising should be direct and simple, but also humouristic. The COO effects study covers two important questions:

1. 1.

   Whether COO cues on product quality perceptions and purchase intentions differ between hybrid (manufactured and designed in two different countries) and non‐hybrid products (manufactured and designed in one country).

2. 2.

   Whether the impact of foreign words in ads differ for “manufactured‐in” and “designed‐in labels”.

The study elaborates on a vast body of knowledge with respect to COO claims in advertising. The hypotheses are well focused but unfortunately the effects were measured only among undergraduate students of a southwestern state university in the USA. Undoubtedly, COO effects will be very different in other countries. That is what an international advertiser would be interested in.

The information content study compares the advertising behaviour of US and Japanese companies in Australia and finds that Japanese firms are more polycentric than American firms.

Finally, one article tackles a relatively new area, measuring American constructs among Chinese students. The authors provide evidence that the effects of advertising on constructs like life satisfaction and self‐esteem, as found in American literature, are not universal. Exposure to ads for unaffordable products and services that in American populations tend to lower self‐esteem or life‐satisfaction had the reverse effect on Chinese college students, it enhanced Chinese college students’ perception of self‐esteem and life‐satisfaction. These findings are very interesting, but the explanation is not: whereas the findings should be explained by the cultural characteristics typical of the Chinese people, the authors thought they were due to the past years of communist indoctrination.

In sum, although the book includes a number of interesting studies, only a few truly cover new directions in international advertising research. A collection of studies from several countries is not the same as international advertising research. When reading this book I got so confused that I looked up the word “international” in the dictionary, which says “between and among nations”. Thus, the title suggests that the book contains studies of the effects of advertising between or among countries or studies that compare advertising or strategy in different countries. It does not.