A Study On The Advertising Appeals And Cultural Values In China's Auto Advertisements

Purpose—The objective of this thesis is to investigate to what extent advertising appeals in China's auto ads conform to China's national cultural characteristics based on the statistical results of Hofstede's cultural dimension theory. Hypotheses about appeals of China's auto ads and national cultural values are drawn in relation to the three dimensions of Hofstede's framework—uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism and long/short-term orientation.Design/methodology/approach—A sample of 251 automobile advertisements from the print media in China was classified according to advertising appeals and further classified into cultural values according to the cultural dimension theory.Findings—The results show that uncertainty avoidance is an important dimension for advertisers in auto advertising in China and that the auto advertising in China show more values of individualism, although the society is featured by collectivistic culture as Hofstede stated. However, contrary to what was hypothesized, values of long-term orientation are prevalent in auto ads in China. This study also found the correlation between price categories and cultural values and thus suggests that international advertisers should be sensitive to the effects of price categories on the advertising appeals.Originality/value—This thesis reveals that Hofstede's framework could be used as the benchmark of explaining how national cultural values are reflected in auto ad appeals in China and provides empirical evidences for the impact of value paradoxes on advertising in China, suggesting that Hofstede's framework and the value paradoxes provide a possible theory for testing the relationship of the society and its advertising content. Also the thesis further proved the correlation between price categories and cultural values, which is of significance and originality in practice. Key words: Advertising appeals, China, Automobile, National culture, Price...