Search results

Purpose – This chapter presents a framework useful in conducting multicountry marketing and advertising research. For the purpose of illustrating the series of steps involved in conducting such investigations, a six-country study examining global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) is presented. The suggested steps are relevant for the exploration of a wide variety of marketing- and advertising-related topics.

Methodology/approach – Steps essential to a well-planned research design are addressed in detail, including: theory identification, stimuli selection, hypotheses formulation, measurement development, country selection, fictitious ad development, survey design, cross-national data equivalence, and hypotheses testing. Particular attention is given to construct specification (in this case for soft-sell and hard-sell advertising appeals) and fictitious ad development. General consumers in six countries responded to the ads. Specific procedures for validating formative constructs and testing their cross-country equivalency are suggested.

Findings – The chapter provides practical recommendations for conducting cross-cultural research. These recommendations are likely to prove useful to both researchers conducting multicountry investigations, and to instructors teaching graduate-level courses in international marketing and advertising research.

Originality/value of paper – Multicountry research requires a series of challenging decisions. Although a well-planned research design is particularly essential in a cross-cultural setting, little attention has been given in providing researchers and instructors with methodological recommendations. This chapter is intended to be a useful reference for these audiences.

Even with the evidence that participation in home-sharing is highly ecologically sustainable, the existing consumer communication studies in the hospitality sector have predominantly focussed on the social and economic benefits. This study aims to examine how the environmental sustainability benefits of home-sharing services can be effectively communicated to consumers.

Two scenario-based experiments (Study 1: n = 377 and Study 2: n = 290) examined the effects of consumers’ consumption orientations, and the appeal of environmental sustainability benefits emphasised advertising on their home-sharing adoption intentions.

Study 1 demonstrated that when consumers with either a hedonic or utilitarian consumption orientation book travel accommodation, their home-sharing adoption intentions increase depending on whether advertisements are designed as hard- or soft-sell appeal, respectively. Study 2 showed that the influence of an environmental sustainability benefits emphasised advertisement that has considered consumers’ consumption orientation and applied the corresponding advertising appeal design is as effective as a home-sharing service that offers economic benefits and is even better than an advertisement that emphasises social benefits, particularly for utilitarian-oriented consumers.

This study is the first in the lodging sector examining the ways in which the environmental sustainability benefits of home-sharing services can be effectively communicated to consumers. The findings shed light on corporate practices pertaining to information that home-sharing service marketers can control and provide an essential basis for further advertising, consumer differences, environmental sustainability awareness and collaborative consumption studies.

This paper aims to provide insight into the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance.

A survey of 4,984 participants from the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain and France was conducted.

This paper shows that religiousness is a (negative) predictor of avoidance of advertisements in traditional and digital media and that advertisement trustworthiness mediates this effect. Higher perceived trustworthiness of advertising among the more religious people leads to less advertisement avoidance. Less religious people trust advertising less and, consequently, show higher advertisement avoidance. The role of religiousness is explained by a positive relationship between religiousness and perceived advertisement trustworthiness because of religious people’s general conformity to authority and because of religion’s emphasis on the good of fellow human beings.

One limitation is that response bias may have occurred because of the self-reported data on advertisement avoidance in different media. Another limitation is that though the use of existing panels has advantages, it also has disadvantages. Two such disadvantages of the sampling procedure are the considerable non-responses and the impossibility of a non-response analysis for our study. Although all the respondents had Internet access and responded fairly quickly to the survey, we do not know whether they are special in any systematic way.

The implication of the current paper is that advertisers might also benefit from more closely examining religion and religiousness as a key variable for segmentation. Religiousness constitutes a relatively stable society grouping, and media vehicles also are available for targeting people with different religions within societies (e.g. Websites, social media, magazines, television channels).

This paper is the first to examine the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance from an international perspective. This is important because religiousness may have an impact on marketing communication efforts.

Previous research suggests that firms should articulate incongruent sponsorships to provide a rationale for the relationship between sponsor and sponsorship object. Fit articulation is a strategy that communicates shared associations between sponsor and object. Based on conclusion explicitness theory, this paper aims to conceptualize and tests two fit articulation strategies in sponsorships: open-ended and closed-ended.

Research hypotheses were tested in two experiments.

Only open-ended fit articulation improved brand attitudes. Mediation analyses show that while open-ended articulation influenced brand attitudes through brand image (Study 1 and Study 2) and altruistic motive attributions (Study 2), there was an indirect effect of closed-ended articulation on brand attitudes through global fit perceptions (Study 2).

The results from two experiments suggest that incongruent sponsors should use open-ended conclusions about a shared image dimension. Although explicit arguments may increase global perceptions of fit, they may impede a positive impact on the articulated brand image dimension and generation of altruistic motive attribution. Therefore, sponsorship managers should be careful in terms of using explicit arguments for fit when the sponsorship is incongruent because such arguments may hinder articulation from generating goodwill and a positive brand image.

This is the first paper to develop and test different types of fit articulation strategies in sponsorships.

Because of Southeast Asia's strong economic performance in the past decade and great marketing potential, many Western marketers have increased their marketing activities in this area and hope for a lucrative future. Along with this strong marketing interest is a rapid increase in the number of Western advertising agencies and advertising expenditures in Southeast Asia. For example, six out of the top ten agencies in Taiwan are managed by, or work in cooperation with, American or Japanese agencies (Taipei Advertising Agency Association, 1992). According to Ogilvy & Mather, in 1985, advertising expenditures in Southeast Asia rose by almost 50 percent from 1980 to 1984. During this period, over one billion dollars were spent on mass media advertising in the region (Frith & Frith, 1990). And for the first time, U.S. agency billings from foreign sources surpassed domestic billings in 1988 (Frazer, 1990). International advertising has become a big business in Southeast Asia.

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.

Acculturation theory shows how foreign actors have evolved in Japanese television commercials. If advertising mirrors culture, foreign businesses trying to advertise products in Japan need to be aware of societal changes and tailor their messages to the preferences of the local population. This paper aims to address these issues.

Content analysis explores the changing role of foreign female actors in Japanese television advertising for the years 1992 and 2002. Advertisements' setting, roles, appeals, and verbal and nonverbal communications are tested by chi‐square analysis.

Ads from the 2002 data set show increases in both traditional and modern themes in regards to the location of the ads, roles foreign females play, the advertising appeals, and the use of Japanese communication modalities. The findings suggest that advertisers are consciously or unconsciously incorporating cultural assimilation when ads include foreign actors.

Acculturation theory is useful for explaining cultural shifts to develop more effective advertising messages. Differences in portrayals of foreign people in advertising reflect changes in cultural values that appear to be changing more rapidly due to global trade and communication technology innovations.

Recognizing shifts in cultural norms allows marketers to more effectively communicate with target audiences. Advertisers employing foreign actors may find their messages more effective if local cultural assimilation is used.

This paper identifies and examines changes in communication modalities to show foreign actors displaying Japanese mannerisms. The evidence suggests cultural norms evolve sometimes quickly over time. Even advertisers using a localized approach must carefully monitor changes in cultural norms to assure message effectiveness.

This paper aims to examine metropolitan Chinese Generation Xers' attitude toward advertising and to determine whether the ranking for ad likeability and dislikeability attributes are the same across Hong Kong and Shanghai.

A telephone interview of 200 respondents in each city was conducted using a strategy of matched samples. Generation Xers residing in Hong Kong and Shanghai were selected as these two segments are politically more uniform now than before, share similar economic and business structures, and are exposed to the same goods and services. Respondents were first asked to recall three television advertisements they liked/disliked and give as many reasons as possible to explain why they liked/disliked them. They were also asked about their beliefs in advertising.

The results show that the respondents from both cities find advertising “interesting and entertaining”, but “devious”. In terms of likeable attributes, they like “entertaining”, while “style” is the most disliked attribute. The main difference between the two groups was found in attribute rating. The study concludes by offering several explanations for these variations.

In this study, instead of requesting respondents to interpret what had appeared in the prints or commercials, it examines respondents' verbal descriptions of how they perceived television commercials. This method affords an opportunity to have respondents more freely express their thoughts and feelings about the topic under investigation.

This monograph presents a thorough examination of the phenomena of “threshold” levels of advertising activity and the “wearout’ of advertisements and/or campaigns. These are seen as corresponding to the management questions “How little can we spend/How infrequently can we advertise?” and “How much is too much/How infrequently is too little?” In the first section the relevant literature on, or related to, the two issues is reviewed. Section 2 describes a survey aimed at establishing current beliefs in the existence of the phenomena, the practices resulting from these beliefs, and the data which support them. Finally, Section 3 offers an overview on the managerial issues involved in decisions concerning threshold or wearout risks in advertising. It is suggested that wasted expenditure may be occurring in advertising because the believed levels of threshold and wearout are both too high.

The purpose of this study is to examine cross-cultural differences in the use of visual tangible cues in local corporate Web sites of six nations.

A quantitative content analysis was used to obtain a numerically based summary of visual tangible cues utilized in 207 Web sites of global service corporations.

A clear pattern of differences was observed in the major visual functions (literal vs symbolic), the use of photographs vs illustrations and the utilization of interactive elements between two groups of nations. Eastern visuals tend to rely more on symbolic visuals performing association function, mixed use of photographs and illustrations and customer endorsement, whereas Western visuals are more likely to perform literal functions, use photographs and feature customer–employee interactions.

International services marketers who are planning a global campaign on the Web can benefit by using differentiated visual strategies, which reflect unique cultural characteristics of a target market.

This study adds a new contribution to an international account of Web services advertising in maintaining a comprehensive understanding of contemporary use of visual tangibles cues. It could benefit global services advertisers with both practical and theoretical implications, for no systematic studies have ever touched the visualization strategies on the Web.