Cultural Values Reflected In Execution Of The Advertising Theme: A Comparative Study Of Print Advertisements Of China And America

With the development of economy and social culture, advertisement has become an important and inseparable part of people's daily life. It is not only an economic activity but also a social actor and a cultural product which is the reflection of cultural values. Nowadays, the economic globalization has been paced up, thus to make a study of the relationship between advertising and culture values is of theoretical and practical significance.Based on cultural dimensions by Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Kluckhohn and Strodbeck, and the theoretical framework by Cho et al., the present study seeks to indentify the cultural values reflected in print advertisements between China and America from the aspect of execution in underlying cultural dimensions: contextuality, individualism/collectivism, and time orientation. There are 3 hypotheses being put forward in the thesis. Content analysis is applied in the study to analyze the ads samples in the aspect of execution. The study provides some suggestions for the effective communication between Chinese and American cultures and dissemination of their advertisements.The study has found that in terms of contextuality, Chinese print ads are not more high-context than American ones, however, American print ads are more low-context. The executions of print advertising are found to be more individualistic in American print ads as hypothesized, but Chinese ads are not found to be more collectivistic. Contrary to our hypothesis, Chinese print ads are not more past-oriented, nor are American ones more future-oriented. Instead, print ads in both cultures demonstrate strong present-time orientations.The findings of the thesis are expected to be of help in better understanding the relationship between cultural values and advertising, and in better designs of print ads, so as to promote the cultural communication between China and the west.