The relationship of cultural values and message strategies in service advertising

Abstract

Differences in cultural values may result in perceptual differences and thus necessitate the use of different advertising message strategies in different cultures. This paper tests the relationship between cultural values and advertising message strategies employed in service advertising using the affective response approach, rather than content analysis. The results show that Hong Kong advertisers use significantly more transformational messages than in US services advertising. Advertising message strategies and cultural values often relate in a non‐random way. Informational message strategy and realistic culture are found to be strongly associated. When societies are more materialistic, advertisers are more likely to use transformational messages due to the high correlation between materialism and brand image. The result also shows that masculine culture, and cultures with long‐term orientation, idealism or low individualism are more likely to adopt transformational message strategy.