Humor and cultural values in print advertising: a cross‐cultural study

Abstract

PurposeThe present study aims to discuss the role of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, uncertainty avoidance and individualism/collectivism, on the use of various humor types in print advertising, across culturally diverse countries.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 12,351 ads (3,828 humorous) from the largest circulated UK and Greek magazines was content‐analyzed in light of Speck's humorous message taxonomy, emphasizing humor types and intentional relatedness.FindingsThe results indicate that cultural diversity is reflected in the types of humorous devices that tend to be used in the UK and Greece. British advertisements incorporate not only sentimental but also disparaging humor types such as sentimental humor and full comedy, providing a great deal of pure entertainment. On the contrary, Greek print ads emphasize cognitive humorous appeals, in an attempt to provide credible information to the uncertainty‐avoiding Greek audience.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study highlight some key aspects of UK and Greek print advertising that can be extended in other homogeneous cultures. In individualistic countries with low uncertainty avoidance, it seems that consumers prefer humor‐dominant messages. On the contrary, in collectivistic countries with high uncertainty‐aversion attitudes, humor can be used as a Trojan horse to convey the required information to the target group.Originality/valueThe present study points out how advertisers' intentions to entertain or to inform the target audience are expressed in the use of various humor types in advertising, underlining, also, the effect of cultural values on these communication decisions.

Humorous advertising that travels: A review and call for research

“…Furthermore, researchers should investigate the impact of humor on audiences at both cultural and individual levels. Prior research that simply measures the frequency of humor appeals across national contexts offers mixed results, such that proportions of used humor might be invariant across contexts (Cruthirds, Wang, Wang, & Wei, 2012;Hatzithomas, Zotos, & Boutsouki, 2011) or Culture -National-level -Individual-level significantly different (Alden et al, 1993;Laroche, Nepomuceno, Huang, & Richard, 2011). Perhaps the proportions become more or less invariant over time.…”

Pengaruh Unsur-Unsur Iklan Pajak: Hiburan, Informatif Dan Nilai Iklan

“…Namun beberapa penelitian membuktikan bahwa iklan tidak memiliki pengaruh terhadap kepatuhan masyarakat dalam membayar pajak (Tahar & Rachman, 2014;Waluyo, 2014). Faktor khusus seperti unsur hiburan pada iklan ternyata dibutuhkan dalam suatu iklan (Hatzithomas, Zotos, & Boutsouki, 2011;Ha , Park, & Lee, 2014). Suatu iklan juga harus bersifat informatif dan memiliki advertising value (Ha , Park, & Lee, 2014).…”

The impact of humorous advertising on consumers’ buying, word of mouth and recall

“…There are different techniques of humorous ads, such as arousal-safety (A-S), incongruity resolution (IR) (Spielmann, 2014) and humorous disparagement (Hatzithomas et al, 2011;Brown et al, 2010;Alden et al, 2000). Arousal-safety (AS) comes from the relief theory (Brown et al, 2010); the situation can be funny after being sure that things are safe (Spielmann, 2014).…”