Consumers’ Advertising Media Use: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

The increasing need for advertising strategies, driven by fierce competition for world markets, has made it important for global managers to understand how advertising media are received by consumers from different cultures. The purpose of this study is to examine whether advertising media use of mobile phone service consumers depends on the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance. The results show two interesting differences between consumers from the Netherlands (higher uncertainty avoidance) and the United States (lower uncertainty avoidance). Consumers in a higher uncertainty-avoidance context use more sources to collect product information and consult, in particular, the more trusted media.