The impact of culture difference on advertising - Research Proposal Example

? The impact of culture difference on advertising: Research proposal November 26, 11-26. The impactof culture difference on advertising: Research proposal Title: The impact of culture difference on advertising Rationale Businesses operate in competitive environments and are driven by profit maximization motives. Competitiveness is therefore a significant factor and marketing is one of the available approaches that allow organizations to increase their revenues through attracting and retaining customers. Advertisement is one of the available and commonly used marketing strategies and plays different roles such as value addition towards improving a product image over those of competing products. Advertisement also helps organizations to develop brands for their products towards customer loyalty and creates awareness of newly introduced products into the market of improvements on existing products. Other objectives of advertising are publicising a discrete product, developing a corporate image, and gaining access to a target market (Butterfield, 2012). Advertisement is however, a communication strategy is susceptible to different barriers to effective communication. Existence of a barrier limits dissemination of intended information to a target population and therefore hinders the roles of advertisement. Cultural difference between communicating parties or differences among sub sections of the target audience therefore determines effectiveness of a communication and as Keyton explains, such differences may limit effectiveness of advertisement or may improve effectiveness (2010). People find difficulty in understanding communications that are based on foreign cultures and cultural stereotypes and offer barrier to effective communication, and hence advertisement, in a multicultural set up. Integral cultures have however been associated with facilitated communication (Nelson and Quick, 2012). This paper proposes a study to establish, empirically, impacts of cultural differences on advertising. Research questions Advertising is a fundamental tool to organizations and theories suggest its dependence on cultural differences. This study explores the following research questions in order to establish effects of cultural differences on advertising. What are the effects of cultural differences on advertising? What are the effective ways of advertising according to cultural differences? What are the suitable strategies to developing advertisements that sensitive to cultural differences and can generate positive effects of the differences? Literature review Existing literature suggest existence of stereotypes to cultural differences among consumers. These stereotypes begin with preliminary analysis of advertisement before the audience’s response to content of advertisements. Creativity in advertisements, which is instrumental to effectiveness, is one of the major victims of culture based stereotypes and the audience’s perception of creativity vary with cultural orientation. This may then extend to relative effectiveness of advertisement based on cultural orientations and identifies the need for exploration of other effects of cultural differences on advertising (An, 2013). The effect of culture on advertisement has been noted in television advertising in cross some regions. A study of university students in Warwick, Beijing, and Hong Kong showed this. The students reported a significant difference in perception on television advertisement and the observation suggest that this difference could be observed across people from other regions and across different modes of advertisement. In addition to cross cultural difference in attitude towards advertisement, differences exist between attitudes towards television advertisement and other television program and this means that reliance on television viewership as an indicator of advertisement may not be true (Guo, Cheung and Leung, 2012). A study on effectiveness of online advertisement also supports effectiveness of cultural differences on advertising outcomes and cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s model explain some of the variations. Interaction also exists between advertising and measures of advertising in different culture and understanding of such mediator role is important for effective advertisement (Ju, 2013). Jin further associates culture with the quality of advertisements that organizations produce. The author suggests implementation of cultural differences in cross-cultural advertising based on studies from four countries (2010). While cultural differences may offer a barrier to effective advertising, cross-cultural competence and incorporating the competence in crisis management helps in controlling adverse effects of cultural differences on advertising (Oliveira, 2013). Research methodology Existing literature offers information on different relationships between advertisement and cultural difference across different cultures and regions. This study proposes to study the different aspects from a single population. Researchers in the field of study have explored quantitative method’s quasi-experimental design. The study by Ju is an example in which research participants were organized into groups and treatment applied to each group. In the study, research participants were offered advertisement banners before their responses were sought with the aid of a questionnaire. Selection of research participants and treatment effect of the advertisement banner defines the scope of quasi-experimental design (Ju 2013; McNabb, 2013). Non-experimental design is another research design that researchers have implemented in the field of study. Researchers, under the design, only observe occurrences in their natural scopes without the need to randomize participants into experimental and control groups. The design also requires no treatment on research participants (Kothari 2004). This was the case in the study by Jin in which content analysis was applied to banners were collected from four countries and their characteristics evaluated (Jin, 2010). Non-experimental design was also applied in another study that sought to investigate differences in attitude towards TV advertising among viewers from different culture. In the study by Guo, Cheung and Leung, the researchers observed attitude on a quantitative scale but without any treatment effect to the research participants. Observations were made on such values as economic power, personal power, social and moral power, and regulations on advertising (Guo, Cheung and Leung, 2012). A consideration of An’s study on effects of culture on people’s perception of advertisement creativity also assumed a non experimental research design because the researchers just administered questionnaires to research participants without such measures as intervention, and treatment and control groups (2013). A review of previous studies indicates significant application off quantitative research method with focus on non-experimental design. While the approaches offer a basis for establishing a relationship between cultural difference and advertising, it does not develop in-depth understanding. Phenomenology, a qualitative research design, can however meet this limitation and facilitate theory development on the relationship between culture and advertisement. The proposed study can therefore explore qualitative perspective. References An, D. (2013). Cultural influence on perceptions of advertising creativity: A cross-cultural comparison of U.S. and Korean advertising standards. International Journal of Marketing Studies 5(5), 75-87. Butterfield, L. (2012). Excellence in advertising. Burlington, MA: Routledge. Guo, G., Cheung, F. and Leung, W. (2012). Cross-cultural differences in attitude towards TV advertising among Beijing, Hong Kong, and Warwick viewers. International Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications 4(1), 34-60. Jin, C. An empirical comparison of online advertisement in four countries. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing 18(3/4), 235-261. Ju, B. (2013). A proposed cross-cultural examination of online advertising effectiveness in China and the UK. International Journal of Business and Management 8(6), 34-39. Keyton, J. (2010). Communication and organizational culture: A key to understanding work experience. New York, NY: SAGE. Kothari, C. (2004). Research methodology: Methods and techniques. New Delhi: New Age International. McNabb, D. (2013). Research methods in public administration and nonprofit management: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Nelson, D. and Quick, J. (2012). Organizational behavior: Science, the real world, and you. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Oliveira, M. (2013). Multicultural environments and their challenges to crisis communication. Journal of Business Communication 50(3), 253-277. Read More