A Cross-cultural Research On Advertising

With the development of social culture and economy, advertisement has become animportant and inseparable part of people’s daily life. Many scholars have studiedadvertising from its linguistic features or its translating methods. However, it is not only amarketing tool but also a social actor and a cultural artifact. Advertising suggests the basiccharacteristics of a culture in the more comprehensive and detailed extent. To sellcommodities or increase quantity of sales is an important goal of advertising. It is not justa business activity that having the ambition to sell more goods. It is rather a culturalmeaning communication process, having an intrinsic relationship with culture. Advertisingmaintains a country’s history, customs, values and national characteristics etc. Nowadays,the cross-cultural communication has increased rapidly, thus, international advertisingplays an important role to do business and learn each nation’s culture. In order to besuccessful in international communication, we must consider differences in culture. Thisessay attempts to analyze the adverting in a cross-cultural perspective in the hope of doingsome contribution to the further research of advertising.According to Hofstede’s culture Dimensions theory and Sperber and Wilson’Relevance theory, this essay carries out three questions. The first one is what attitudes theconsumers from different cultural backgrounds have towards advertisements. The secondone is what the value differences between different cultures are. Third is how internationaladvertising is a cross-cultural communication. As for different culture background, it takesChinese and American as an example. In this essay, questionnaire method is applied. Justlike the opinion survey shows American advertisements and Chinese advertisements havecertain differences in the values they advocate, and share some cultural universals as well.In the light of relevance theory, the paper deals with the advertising creation in theinternational circumstances. By analyzing the successful advertisements and those failedunder the cross-cultural context in the international background, it explores thecross-cultural communication characteristics of international advertising.The study has found the following results. In variety of cultures, the expression ofadvertising information and cultural values are different, but the function, the purpose andpeople’s attitudes towards advertising are roughly the same. Advertising culture hasconvergence trend. Advertising creates in different countries, which is deep-rooted in itsspecific cultural environment. It is influenced by each nation’s cultural philosophy, with rich national characteristics. It plays an important role for the formation and stability ofcultural recognition. International advertising is the information that placed under themulticultural background, so in essence it has intercultural communication attributes.