Business Advertising Appeals as a Mirror of Cultural Dimensions: A Study of Eleven Countries

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Abstract
Across cultures, do systematic differences in advertising content mirror predictable differences in the cultures themselves? The authors designed a study to shed light on that question, using Hofstede's cultural model as a tool for analyzing cultures and using advertising appeals identified by Pollay. After coding advertisements in business publications from 11 countries for the appeals employed, they computed correlation coefficients relating the proportional use of each appeal and Hofstede's cultural dimensions: individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity. The culture-reflecting quality of advertising was supported for 10 of 30 hypothesized relationships, and for an additional eight after removal of outliers from the data.