Standardization Versus Localization: A Cross-Cultural Content Analysis Of Coca Cola's Television Commercials In China And The United States

With an unprecedented growth rate for the last twenty years, the advertising market in China has vaulted from an emerging status to the point of being the second largest national advertising market around the world. As global corporations are vying into this country in their efforts to expand market and seek out new business, the cultural chasm and complexities of China has made it an urgent issue for global brands to pursue reliable marketing approaches and thus brought the longstanding debate over standardized versus market-specific campaigns to a whole new level.Proponents of standardized advertising like Levitt and Fatt generally down-play cultural barriers and argued that standardized global campaign gave access to market segments which were similar from one country to another. Other critics suggest that it is inappropriate to share advertising themes among countries in most cases and that effective advertising must be adapted to particular cultures.The current thesis is an attempt to examine how certain multinational corporation has glocalized their marketing strategies in response to the cultural challenges of China. By comparing the cultural content of Coca Cola's advertising in China and the United States, the author hopes to be able to shed some light on the debate.Eighty television advertisements broadcast by Coca Cola Company in China and the United States in the time periods 2005-2009 were content analyzed following the procedure laid down by Cheng and Schweitzer (1996). This study looks at the issues:R1: What are the dominant cultural values that are portrayed in sample televisionadvertisements?R2: How do the dominant cultural values portrayed in sample Chinese televisionadvertisements differ from that in Coca Cola's American advertising?R3: What marketing strategies did Coca Cola pursue in its Chinese market as reflected from the above comparison?Eighteen dominant cultural values are identified from the analysis and a comparison of cultural values identified in the two countries was discussed. The findings underline the complexity of the global/local nexus discussed in the globalization debate. The frequent presence of several typical Chinese cultural values in Coca Cola's Chinese television advertisement instead of the US commercials indicates that Coca Cola has come a long way in responding to the local Chinese culture. On the other hand, the high occurrence of some cultural value such as 'individualism' in Coca Cola's television advertisement in China (a typical collective culture) suggests that the product category, the company's global strategy at certain time of period, and even the commercial battle against its competitors would overshadow the brand's localization approaches in China and help determine the cultural values portrayed in the advertising to a large extent.Although the findings of this study need to be testified in further research, they have basically indicated Coca Cola's marketing strategy to perform a balancing act between standardized advertising and a blending into Chinese local culture.The thesis consists of five parts. In Chapter one, the author briefly introduces the research background, purposes and questions. Chapter two gives a clear review of the theoretical framework of the study. After that, Chapter three moves to the methodology of the present study concerning the procedure and sample designs. The results and findings of the collected data are reported in Chapter four and conclusions are drawn in Chapter five, which presents both the implications and limitations of the present study as well as suggestions for future research.