Cross-cultural advertising : cultural values that affect advertising likeability

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the cultural values that have influences on consumers’ advertising likeability. Three groups of nationalities were assessed, including: Singaporean Chinese, Chinese from China, and Westerners. Advertising likeability was examined from two aspects: liking of culturally congruent advertisements and liking of humorous advertisements with sexual content. In the analysis of the impact of cultural elements, individual-level factors that have potential moderating effects were taken into account. These consist of the need for cognition (NFC), need for humor (NFH), and cosmopolitanism (COS). The findings from this study have shown the effects of ad-culture congruency. In other words, cultural differences along Hofstede’s dimension of collectivism and individualism have effects on consumers’ preferences towards ad appeals. Subjects tend to show preferences for the ad appeal that is conforming to their cultural orientations. Specifically, Singaporean Chinese favor collectivistic themes, while their Western counterparts prefer individualistic themes. The moderating effect of Product type was not proved to be significant in this study. That is to say, whether the product is personal or non-personal, ad-culture congruency is beneficial. Besides, the level of cosmopolitanism did not appear to affect the liking of culturally congruent ads. With regards to humorous advertisements with sexual content, results from this study suggest that Singaporean Chinese favor those ads less than Westerners but more than Chinese from China. Being well-known as modern and open-minded, Singaporean Chinese are still conservative towards sexuality contents in humorous ads. This liking is moderated by the individual level of cosmopolitanism (COS) and need for humor (NFH). Specifically, people who are highly cosmopolitan and have higher need for humor shown greater liking for sexually humorous advertisements. Finally, the study looks at the role of advertising liking in advertising effectiveness. Findings have shown that liking of the ad leads to better attitudes towards the brand and purchase intention. This effect, however, is moderated by individual need for cognition (NFC).