The Visual Components of Print Advertising: A Five‐country Cross‐cultural Analysis

Abstract

Today, one of the most important and creative challenges in international advertising is communicating to people of diverse cultures and nations. The challenge arises because of increasing globalization of economies, cultural and national differences, and advanced media technology. A review of the literature suggests a need for comparative analysis of advertising practices. Analyses, empirically, magazine advertisements from the US, UK, France, India and Korea to identify cross‐cultural similarities and differences in the visual appeal.

How well do advertising images of health and beauty travel across cultures? A self-concept perspective

“…The cities represented the same countries that were included in Seitz and Johar's (1993) study of self-image and advertising. England and France were included as in studies of advertising content analysis conducted by Whitelock and Chung (1989) and Cutler & Erramilli (1992). The sample was divided into five strata due to the cross-cultural nature of the study and the expectation of larger variance among the strata than within them.…”

“…Previous research focused mainly on content analyses of advertisements using pre-established criteria (often advertising elements) to investigate the degree of standardization practices across cultures (Cutler & Erramilli, 1992;Cutler & Javalgi, 1992;Duncan & Ramaprasad, 1995;Evans & Riyait, 1993;Frith & Wesson, 1991;Graham, Kamins, & Oteomo, 1993;Kaynak & Mitchell, 1981;Leach & Liu, 1998;Martenson, 1987;Mueller, 1987Mueller, , 1992Resnik & Stern, 1977;Szymanski, Bharadwaj, & Varadarajan, 1993;Whitelock & Chung, 1989;Zandpour, Chang, & Catalano, 1992). However, these studies say little or nothing about possible cross-cultural differences in consumer perceptions of advertising stimuli in advertising elements.…”

A Content Analysis of Hotel Advertisements in China

“…Informative advertising was regarded as "socially good" [18], whereas the persuasive advertising was viewed as "socially bad" [19]. Researchers have revealed the positive effect of employing pictorial materials, such as illustration, picture and headline of print advertisement [20]. Therefore, this study attempts to study the use of headlines and illustrations, as well as the level of information content of the hotel advertisements in China.…”

Advertising in a Luxury Fashion Magazine: A Comparison between Italy and China

“…Literature Review National cultural differences can influence advertising practices and this influence can be observable at the component level of individual advertising (Cutler et al, 1992). Some western advertising conventions have been transferred to Asia through international version of global magazines (Cheng and Frith, 2006).…”

“…Yin (1999) pointed out that some local elements, such as local cultures, local languages, localized product attributes and models are relevant. According to a research on print advertisings by Cutler et al (1992) visual elements of advertisings can be: the size, the frequency of black and white vs. colour pictures, photographic visual (illustrations vs. photographs), the size and frequency of product portrayal and the mention of price in the adv. Also visual process appeals (e.g., description, association, metaphor, and storytelling approaches) are considered advertising elements and has been analysed (Javalgi et al, 1995) in a cross-cultural perspective.…”