Relating Hofstede's dimensions of culture to international variations in print advertisements: A comparison of appeals

Advertising researchers have long been concerned with the relationship between values and advertising. Many have argued that advertisements reflect a culture's values, while others have argued that advertisements create cultural values. This dissertation addresses four questions: Are the differences observed in advertising content related to some measurement of cross-cultural variation in values? Do the differences observed in advertising content exist across several countries or only between selected pairs? Do the differences observed in advertising content exist across various values or only among selected groups? Does Hofstede's cultural model offer a tool for anticipating these differences? By examining the relationship between advertising variation and cultural values, this dissertation attempts to answer these questions. This relationship was explored with a content analysis of the 42 advertising values identified by Pollay (1983) in advertisements in business publications from eleven countries. The countries in this study were the U.S.A., Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Finland, France, South Africa, India, Israel, Taiwan and Japan. Data analysis was conducted in two stages. First, the data were analyzed by chi-square test to assure that differences existed across the countries for the range of advertising values. Results suggest strongly that values displayed in advertising appeals are employed differently across countries. All 42 appeals were significantly different across countries; therefore, the data were analyzed to test the relationship between values in advertising and salient values within a country's culture. In this second stage, Pearson correlation coefficients were computed between the percentage measure of appeal use and Hofstede's (1980) cultural dimensions. Hofstede's works yielded five cultural dimensions, Individualism (IDV), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), Power Distance (PDI), Masculinity (MAS), and Long-Term Orientation (LTO). To some extent, the reflective quality of advertising was supported. Half, 21 of 42 hypotheses tested in this stage, were supported.