Effect of Hofstede's dimensions on Skin care advertising at the micro level: A Content analysis of Olay's Indian and US Digital ads

摘要

In this era of globalization, organizations are increasingly expanding overseas in search of new markets and greater profitability. Colonizing new markets also means mastering inter cultural communication and the most important tool for strategic communication used by global businesses today is advertising. Since strategies for advertisements are increasingly being developed internationally, it has become imperative to have an understanding of the country's cultural characteristics like language, lifestyle, norms, education, attitudes etc [1]. In this context a map of different national value structures and their consequences for behavior across cultural frontiers was created by Professor Geert Hofstede and this study examines how Hofstede's cultural dimensions affect the individual ad units and how applicable the dimensions are at the micro level. Two ads from the skin care segment released in 2015 as part of a successful global campaign, one from India belonging to Hofstede's family cluster and one from US belonging to the Contest cluster were chosen for analysis based on the popularity of the brand and sub brand.