A Study Of Cultural Differences In Chinese And Western Automobile Advertising

In today's worldwide economic integration, one of the tendencies that economic globalization brings is the coexistence of cultural differences and similarities. As long as people carry out any trading activities with other countries and regions, cultural differences are unavoidable. Facts have proved that trading activities only within one country or one region become less and less. Modern technology narrows the span of time and space, "no frontier" of technological information makes the world become "smaller and smaller", and the swift procedure of the globalization of international economy makes trading exchanges comparatively faster and easier than in the past. Consequently, the awareness and desire of exploiting overseas market in each country has become much stronger than ever before.Without any doubt, in various competitive propagandist means, advertising is the most direct and effective for launching one's product to the international market and attracting potential consumers. Of course, as a weapon of modern commercial warfare, the essence of advertising is marketing merchandises and gaining the greatest profits. However, nowadays advertising is much more than a simple economic propaganda. In addition to conveying information of product and guiding consumption, advertising, at the same time, shows, in a hidden or displayed way, cultural values, and advocates ways of life or aesthetic tastes. Imperceptibly, it exerts a strong psychological impact on audience. So, to some extent, advertising is a certain product of culture and a form of culture as well as a symbol of modern civilization. On the one hand, the wide dissemination of advertising is gradually changing people's consumption attitudes and behaviour in a manner not easy to detect. On the other hand, the spreading process of advertising campaign is not only a process in which people share social and cultural concepts, but also a process of transmitting and enhancing the social values of community to the public. In fact, the relationship between advertising and culture is two-way interactive; culture is the background and resource for advertising creation, while advertising, in turn, carriers and reflects the cultural characteristics of different nations and different times. Sometimes advertising enriches culture and even changes culture by constantly adding new elements to culture.As different audiences live in different social and cultural environment, their philosophy, mode of thinking, consumer psychology, ethics, customs, social systems and religious beliefs are inevitably different from each other, thus in accepting the advertising propaganda and in performing purchasing action, consumers show different cultural characteristics. This is also one of the major obstacles that international industries often encounter in exploiting the overseas consumer market.Based on the elementary theories of study about culture and advertising, and taking the interactive relationship between culture and advertising as starting point, in this thesis, the author makes a comparative analysis from cultural perspective on Chinese and Western auto ads so that to find out the cultural differences and to explore their influence and limitation in auto advertising. The comparison and analysis are mainly on aspects of philosophy, thinking pattern, value orientation, power distance, cultural tradition and customs, and so on. The qualitative and comparative approaches are used so as to dig up the underlying causes of these differences by roots and their impact as well as their constraints to auto ads.Through comparison and analysis, the author has found that, although some similarities exist in China and Western auto ads, the cultural differences between the two are enormous and multifarious. Accordingly, the author sums up that the values shown on auto ads match respectively with the basic value systems of Chinese traditional Confucian culture and Western Christian culture. Of course, the differences between the two are significant; this is the result that advertisers and advertising companies want to meet the target audiences' needs and please them in view of audiences' local environment. This also shows that, as an important means of cross-cultural exchange, in advertising promotion, it is necessary to take cultural elements of target market into consideration. As with the more homogeneous products, technological competition among goods has gradually shifted to cultural competition. As long as ads highlight the cultural connotation and cultural value of commodities, the advertising promotion can win the consumers' recognition and grasp their psychological needs in the fierce market competition. Conversely, if advertising campaign is reversed to the expectations of audiences and even hurts the audiences' feelings, failure is unavoidable.It is believed that the analysis and comparison of the Chinese and Western culture in auto advertising will very helpful for effectively breaking cultural barriers of the world economy market and for enhancing mutual understanding between China and the Western countries. It will make the economical exchanges and commercial trade between China and the West smoother and more unobstructed. Moreover, this research is also significant for those who have ambition to make auto ads in overseas market, because the study not only indicates that the advertising makers must attach much attention to cultural differences when creating advertising works but also provides proposals from many aspects for reference.