Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Hofstede’s (2001) cultural framework and the value paradox explain the use of appeals in advertising in Estonia.

Hypotheses are drawn in relation to Hofstede’s original four cultural dimensions – power distance, masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. A sample of 110 print advertisements from four magazines were analyzed using Pollay’s (1983) classification of advertising appeals.

The results show that Estonian advertising reflects paradoxical values related to low power distance and femininity dimensions, and culturally congruent values related to high-uncertainty avoidance and individualism.

Findings suggest that cultural values (desired) alone are insufficient to predict the reflection of culture in advertising. Rather, consideration of the discrepancies between the cultural values (desired) and practices (desirable) enables a better explanation of the relationship between society and its advertising.

Scholars have shown increasing interest in the consequences of culture on advertising, but the opposing aspect of cultural values and practices has received limited research attention. The paper offers interesting insights regarding the effect of culture and the value paradox on the use of appeals in advertising. Additionally, analyzing the advertising of Eastern Europe is highly important because of the limited research attention that exists with respect to advertising in the region.

The objective of this study is to investigate to what extent advertising appeals in Hong Kong and Korea are different, and whether the differences between the two countries can be attributed to the differences in nations' cultural characteristics. Hypotheses are drawn in relation to the two dimensions of Hofstede's framework – uncertainty avoidance and masculinity/femininity.

A sample of 803 prime‐time television commercials from the two countries was analyzed using Cheng and Schweitzer's classification of advertising appeals.

The results show that femininity is an important variable for explaining differences in advertising between Hong Kong and Korea. Both Hong Kong and Korean advertising show no difference in values of high uncertainty avoidance, although an appeal of high uncertainty avoidance was used more often in Korean advertising. However, values of low uncertainty avoidance are more prevalent in television commercials in Korea, a country of high uncertainty avoidance, than Hong Kong, a country of low uncertainty avoidance. It is also found that the correlation between product categories and cultural values is society‐based.

This study reveals that Hofstede's framework does explain cross‐cultural differences between Hong Kong and Korea and provides empirical evidences for the impact of value paradoxes on advertising in both countries, suggesting that Hofstede's framework and the value paradoxes provide a possible theory for testing the relationship of the society and its advertising content within a culture as well as across cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate advertising appeals and cultural values in television advertisements from newly emerging markets. Specifically, the paper hypothesizes that the advertising appeals in the advertisements of sub‐Saharan African (SSA) emerging consumer markets (ECMs) with higher level of economic development (South Africa) will reflect more hedonic appeals than the ones from SSA ECMs with a lower level of economic development (Ghana). The paper also developes hypotheses in relations to Munene, Schwartz, and Smith's cultural value framework in SSA.

The research approach used in this paper, entails a combination of qualitative and empirical content analysis of 505 unduplicated advertisements from Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. Content analysis technique is appropriate if the paper is focused on testing how environmental trends (e.g. cultural values, economic situations, etc.) impact the content of sampled advertisements from different regions of the world (Holbrook, 1977).

The paper reveals some global advertising appeals. The findings from the paper also suggest that the advertisements from SSA are homogenous in terms of the use of the cultural values underlying the conservatism dimension and heterogeneous with respect to the use of the cultural values underlying the hierarchy dimension.

The paper uncovers important dimensions that can be employed in implementing standardized and localized advertising programs in SSA.

The paper identifies novel categories of cultural values (e.g. hospitality) in the television commercials from SSA.

It is generally recognised that companies spend approximately 50% of their marketing budget on promotional activities. Advertising belongs to the most visible areas of a company’s activity. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the average recipient associates marketing with advertising, competitions and leaflets about new promotions delivered to houses or offices. Advertising, especially Internet advertising, is one of the most effective forms of marketing and one of the fastest developing areas of business. New channels of communication are emerging all the time – the Internet, digital television, mobile telephony; accompanied by new forms, such as the so-called ambient media. Advertising benefits from the achievements of many fields of science, that is, psychology, sociology, statistics, medicine and economics. At the same time, it combines science and the arts – it requires both knowledge and intuition. Contemporary advertising has different forms and areas of activity; yet it is always closely linked with the operations of a company – it is a form of marketing communication.

The indices of marketing communication presented in this chapter are generally known and used not only by advertising agencies but also by the marketing departments of many organisations. Brand awareness, advertising scope and frequency, the penetration index or the response rate belong to the most widely used indices; others, like the conversion rate or the affinity index, will get increasingly more significant along with the process of professionalisation of the environment of marketing specialists in Poland and with increased pressure on measuring marketing activities. Marketing indices are used for not only planning activities, but also their evaluation; some of them, such as telemarketing, mailing and coupons, provide an extensive array of possibilities of performance evaluation.

The aim of this study was to develop a theoretical model of email advertising effectiveness and to investigate differences between permission‐based email and spamming. By examining different types of email (i.e. permission‐based email and spamming), the present study empirically tested the theoretical linkage between email advertising values, perceived instrusiveness, and the attitudinal‐behavioural dispositions towards email advertising.

A survey was conducted using 221 respondents from Taiwan. Two scenarios were designed for the present study. The questionnaires were equally divided into two sets, with the first half containing a scenario depicting permission‐based email, and the other half containing a scenario describing a spamming email. Each respondent only received one set of the survey.

Results from a survey of 221 Internet users in Taiwan indicate that values and attitudes toward, and the perceived intrusiveness of, email advertising significantly affect consumers’ behavioral dispositions toward email advertising. The results suggest that permission‐based email is more effective as compared to spam email advertising. For solicited email, consumers perceived less intrusiveness if the email advertisement offered them financial incentives.

The authors acknowledge four limitations in this study. These limitations however provide further direction for future studies in the discipline. The discussion of these limitations is provided.

Importantly, this study yields significant theoretical and managerial implications. Concerned with the context of email advertising, the authors’ work provides theoretical support for both constructs of advertising values and perceived intrusiveness as important. Concerned with the advertisers, this study renders important implications for better planning of marketing mix strategy using email.

This study provides new theoretical insights into factors influencing consumers’ acceptance of email advertising by incorporating perceived intrusiveness as a mediator in the relationship between advertising values and attitudinal‐behavioral dispositions. By empirically comparing the different types of email advertisements of permission‐based email and spamming, the present study also offers better understanding and extending of the current literature on email advertising research.

A recent marketing trend is sending short message service (SMS) apparel advertisements to capture young adult consumers’ attention. These targeted consumers are reluctant to view SMS advertisements due to perceived irrelevant advertising content. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumer vanity trait and perceived SMS apparel advertising values for 291 college-aged Generation Y consumers (aged between 18 and 24) from the USA.

The study opted for a quantitative, correlational design to investigate the relationships among vanity traits and perceived SMS apparel advertising values. An internet-based survey collected vanity trait attributes, perceived SMS apparel advertising values, and demographics from the participant. Correlation and multiple regression analyses tested the degree of association and measured the strength of predictive relationships among the said variables.

Empirical findings of this study reveal a positive, predictive relationship between vanity traits and perceived SMS apparel advertising values. Symbols of success is the most dominant vanity trait for males and ethnic minorities.

Excluded from the present study was investigating the relationship between personality and consumer vanity trait. Personality evolves with the individual’s worldview and lived experience. It would be interesting to explore achievement-vanity through the consumers’ life story.

Consumer adoption and abandonment of the latest fashion trends can occur quickly. The timing of an SMS apparel advertising campaign and advertising content relevancy are critical to initiate the targeted consumers’ interest.

This paper sheds some lights on the contribution of psychological predispositions to apparel consumption-related situations for consumers.

The history of advertising seems destined to be very negative in its judgement about its social and cultural consequences. The regrets and fears of many prominent scholars about the commercialisation and marketisation of cultures are summarised. A method for measuring and monitoring the cultural character of advertising, the cultural values expressed and endorsed, is also presented. US data for 1900–1980 print and 1970's television advertisements are provided, showing some stability in the hierarchy of values promoted by advertising.

The purpose of this study is to examine likeable executional techniques in advertising across five Asian countries and their impact on purchase intentions.

A total of 1,000 urban young adults in five Asian countries (HK, China, Indonesia, Thailand and India) were telephone interviewed on their thoughts about the TV advertisement/s that they liked, product that was being advertised and purchase intention. Their responses were summarised into seven likeable executional techniques and product categories.

There is not a specific likeable executional technique that influences a purchase in four of the five countries. India is the only country where significant but weak overall model fit observed. These results demonstrate that, while there are differences among the countries, people in the same cohort broadly share the same values. For product categories, our findings demonstrate that product nature may moderate cultural influence on advertising effectiveness.

International advertisers who are vying for a share of the largely‐untapped Asian market can benefit by understanding the target country's cultural values and using it as a guideline for creating effective executional techniques in advertising.

This study extends the existing knowledge which demonstrates that, in Asia, persuasive executional techniques differ depending on the product category.

The purpose of this research is to study creative strategy and execution as opposed to all elements of marketing and advertising standardization. It explores the standardization model (e.g. global, glocal, local, and single case strategy) by examining the international advertising strategies that multinational corporations (MNCs) from North America, Europe, and Asia used in their advertising campaigns targeting two culturally different markets: the United States and China.

A content analysis of 210 print advertisements compares the extent of standardization in creative strategy and execution across product country of origin (Japan, Korea, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States). Western versus non‐Western cultural cues are also coded and examined.

Overall, MNCs are more likely to adopt the glocal strategy than any other strategies in their international campaigns. Specifically, EU‐based MNCs tend to pursue the global strategy, whereas the North America‐based MNCs seem to favor the glocal strategy and Asia‐based MNCs tend to use local strategy. Western and non‐Western cultural values are found to manifest in the American and Chinese ads similarly, indicating a trend of increasing similarity in international advertising in face of global consumer culture.

The results of this content analysis provide a fuller picture in understanding the long‐standing issues of standardization in international advertising because of an approach to analyze creative strategy separately from execution. However, content analysis is inherently limited in inferring causality between observed patterns and mechanisms/variables that account for the patterns. Also, the time frame for sample selection, which is set as a year prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, is another limitation of the study.

There is an ongoing trend of using “one‐creative, multiple‐execution” strategy in international advertising. MNCs may distinguish advertising creative strategy from execution when developing their international advertising campaigns.

First, this study addresses the issue with a clear conceptual definition of standardization and differentiates the strategic and tactic standardization. Second, this is the first attempt to explore the standardization model using a sample of 51 multinational brands from North America, Europe, and Asia. The authors find that MNCs are practicing some standardization advertising strategy, but to varying degrees. Third, this study identifies and empirically tests two external factors – culture and convergence of external markets – that influence standardization.

This paper aims to view the role of religiosity in moderating the relationship between ego-defensive function of Muslim consumers’ and attitude toward advertising of controversial product. There is a rising concern among Muslim consumers’ with regards to the halal status of many food outlets in Malaysia. This came out because many food operators do not understand what halal really means. Many of them are from Kopitiams food and beverages industry.

Survey method was used for the purpose of data collection in April 2014, and quantitative approach has been used as well. This study applied functional theory of attitudes to support this framework. Respondents consisted of 375 Muslim consumers’ in Malaysia.

The paper provides empirical insights about how religiosity moderates the relationship between ego-defensive function and consumer attitude toward advertising. Consumers with a high level of religiosity are more likely to respond less favorably toward the advertising, while consumers who have a low level of religiosity are more likely to respond more favorably toward the advertisement. In addition, it can be postulated that religiosity reduces negative effects of ego-defensive function.

The fact that religious groups are more organized, equipped and motivated to register their concern, demands better understanding of such groups by marketers. To avoid any controversies, or potential business loss, a better understanding of what could ignite their reaction seems to be an appropriate preventive strategy.

Only a few studies directly examined the influence of religion on marketing communication. The effects of religion on the advertising of controversial products remain largely unstudied to date. Therefore, this paper fills the gap in the research area.