Cultural appeals in Indian TV commercials

Abstract

TV advertisers propel the advertisements with various psychological triggers called 'appeals' to persuade the audiences and consumers. When such consumption appeals are put in sync with the cultural values of the consumers, they are called 'cultural appeals'. The appeals are embedded in the discursive structure of the commercials. This study undertakes a content analysis of the values, visuals, and auditory corpus of 538 Indian TV commercials to find out the variations in the use of global, local, and glocal cultural appeals in them. It is found that glocal cultural appeals are used more frequently followed by global cultural appeals whereas the use of local cultural appeals is very negligible. Across commercials from foreign, Indian, and joint-venture companies, the most prominent feature in the sample commercials is Glocal 1, i.e., glocalisation with dominant global cultural elements. The study reveals the global face of the global-local fusion in India by deciphering the asymmetrical cultural blend that characterises contemporary Indian TVCs.