Advertising And Its Cultural Values

Nowadays, advertising penetrates every corner of society. It has becomenot only one of important parts of people's life, but also an indispensable part ofbusiness society. To study the contents of American and Chinese advertisementsand the cultural values manifested in them can be practically significant. Withthe increasingly fierce competition and interdependence between America andChina, knowing about both countries' cultural values can be the key to success atthe international market.This study is intended to compare the similarities and differences betweencultural values reflected in American real estate advertisements and Chinese realestate advertisements. In this study, the theories of Hofstede's, Kluckhohn's,Hall's, and Schwartz's are employed as the theoretical framework for comparingcultural values reflected in real estate advertising in the United States and China.A total of 1,200 real estate advertisements are collected from the Internet, ofwhich 600 are American advertisements and 600 are Chinese advertisements.But the sample used for this study is 300 per country starting from the 200th to500th. The author has analysized the contents of the 300 advertisements percountry. The data reveals seventeen types of advertising appeals.The study found that similarities and differences of cultural values werereflected in American and Chinese real estate ads. One major finding is that bothAmerican real estate ads and Chinese real estate ads share a focus on nature,enjoyment, convenience and modernity, and contain less youth, safety and quality.In addition, American real estate ads more significantly highlight uniqueness,independence, competition, whereas Chinese ads more significantly embodysocial status, tradition, harmony with others.This study also found that the advertising appeals used by both countriesmatch their own cultural value system respectively. American advertisementsfrequently tend to use uniqueness and independence to highlight the value ofindividualism. Chinese advertisements frequently use social status to underliethe value of high power distance.The most important finding is that both countries' cultural value systems areexperiencing changes. Some seemingly Western cultural values such asmodernity and individualism very frequently are contained in Chinese ads, andsome seemingly Oriental cultural values such as collectivism and harmony withnature also appear in American ads.