Cross-Cultural Advertising Execution Style: Past Trends and Future Directions

Objectives: To provide a comprehensive review of cross-cultural advertising content literature and synthesize the conclusions of research studies of cross-cultural execution styles of advertising in past years, namely during 1988-2003 period. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Sixty articles covering comparison of more than 30 countries are collected and analyzed from 18 business leading journals. The study focusses on the four most studied ad dimensions: level of information, emotional/rational appeal typology, elements of advertising appeal, and gender role portrayal. The results of past research on the ad execution styles differences between countries are conformed; with some of opposite conclusions. Findings: Results show that the ads content across countries are significantly different in the level of information, emotional/rational, and advertising appeal dimensions; and often similar with regards to gender role portrayal dimension. Cross-cultural execution styles of advertising on the three dimensions found to be generally different due to the cultural differences; these differences, however, are moderated by other factors such as product type and the lack of a uniform theoretical model for measuring cultural values across countries. Application/Improvements: A qualitative emic approach should be developed to enable establishing data equivalence, and similar sampling frames and methods in all cultural groups.