| This study addresses the question of cross-country standardization of advertising by identifying existing cross-national differences in magazine advertisements. A content analysis of 1,983 advertisements in business, women's, and general interest magazines was performed. The sample included 1989 and 1990 magazine issues from the United States, United Kingdom, France, India and South Korea. The content analysis focused on executional elements in the ads and identified differences by country in the use of (1) the direct response technique, (2) comparative product appeal, (3) literal versus symbolic appeal, (4) repetition of the brand name, (5) repetition of the product package in the visual, (6) size of the product in the ad, (7) literal v.s. symbolic headline, and (8) the number of different nonverbal cues. Cross-national differences were statistically significant for most executional elements, but there were also very large variances in country means and proportions. |
