Cross-cultural advertising : cultural values that affect advertising likeability

摘要

This paper attempts to investigate the cultural values that have influences on consumers’advertising likeability. Three groups of nationalities were assessed, including: SingaporeanChinese, Chinese from China, and Westerners. Advertising likeability was examined fromtwo aspects: liking of culturally congruent advertisements and liking of humorousadvertisements with sexual content. In the analysis of the impact of cultural elements,individual-level factors that have potential moderating effects were taken into account. Theseconsist of the need for cognition (NFC), need for humor (NFH), and cosmopolitanism (COS).The findings from this study have shown the effects of ad-culture congruency. In other words,cultural differences along Hofstede’s dimension of collectivism and individualism haveeffects on consumers’ preferences towards ad appeals. Subjects tend to show preferences forthe ad appeal that is conforming to their cultural orientations. Specifically, SingaporeanChinese favor collectivistic themes, while their Western counterparts prefer individualisticthemes. The moderating effect of Product type was not proved to be significant in this study.That is to say, whether the product is personal or non-personal, ad-culture congruency isbeneficial. Besides, the level of cosmopolitanism did not appear to affect the liking ofculturally congruent ads.With regards to humorous advertisements with sexual content, results from this study suggestthat Singaporean Chinese favor those ads less than Westerners but more than Chinese fromChina. Being well-known as modern and open-minded, Singaporean Chinese are stillconservative towards sexuality contents in humorous ads. This liking is moderated by theindividual level of cosmopolitanism (COS) and need for humor (NFH). Specifically, peoplewho are highly cosmopolitan and have higher need for humor shown greater liking forsexually humorous advertisements.Finally, the study looks at the role of advertising liking in advertising effectiveness. Findingshave shown that liking of the ad leads to better attitudes towards the brand and purchaseintention. This effect, however, is moderated by individual need for cognition (NFC).