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Reclame in Europa: reclame wel of niet cultureel aanpassen?

In verschillende Europese landen worden vaak dezelfde reclameadvertenties gebruikt. Volgens Amerikaans en Aziatisch onderzoek zijn zulke gestandaardiseerde advertenties minder overtuigend dan advertenties die aan de nationale culturen zijn aangepast. Die conclusie blijkt niet op te gaan voor Europa. Een meta-analyse van Europese onderzoeken laat zien dat culturele aanpassing in Europa nauwelijks meerwaarde heeft.

  • Hornikx, J., & O’Keefe, D. J. (2007). Reclame in Europa: reclame wel of niet cultureel aanpassen? Tekstblad, 13 (3), 12-15. [pdf]
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An empirical study on readers’ associations with multilingual advertising

In multilingual advertising, a foreign language is often used for symbolic purposes. In non-French-speaking countries, for instance, French is said to be associated with charm and style. The assumption is that the associations carried by the foreign language are transferred to the product that is advertised. A product advertised using French would thus also be seen as charming and stylish. Although a number of suggestions have been made as to the associations evoked by particular foreign languages, it has never been tested what associations are actually evoked in the minds of consumers. In an experimental study, 78 Dutch respondents were asked to write down their associations with two advertisements for one product which were identical except for the foreign language in which they were written (French, German, or Spanish). We investigated the kinds of associations evoked, the number of associations, their valence (positive, negative, neutral), and participants’ appreciation of the foreign language advertisement. Results showed that the different languages evoked partly different associations, and that the valence of the associations, and not their number, affected participants’ preference for the advertisement. Participants preferred the ad with the highest number of positive associations and the lowest number of negative associations.

  • Hornikx, J., Meurs, F. van, & Starren, M. (2007). An empirical study on readers’ associations with multilingual advertising: the case of French, German, and Spanish in Dutch advertising. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 28 (3), 204-219. [pdf]
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Cultural differences in the persuasiveness of evidence types and evidence quality

Cultural differences in reasoning and persuasion have mainly been documented for the East – West divide. Nisbett (2003) expects such differences to be absent for Western cultures because of their shared Grecian inheritance. The results of two experiments, however, show that France and the Netherlands, both Western-European countries, differ with respect to the persuasiveness of different evidence types. In Study 1 (N = 600), cultural differences occurred between the relative persuasiveness of anecdotal, statistical, causal and expert evidence. In Study 2 (N = 600), the quality of statistical and expert evidence was manipulated. For the Dutch, but not for the French, normatively strong evidence was more persuasive than normatively weak evidence for both evidence types. Implications and possible explanations are discussed.

  • Hornikx, J., & Hoeken, H. (2007). Cultural differences in the persuasiveness of evidence types and evidence quality. Communication Monographs, 74 (4), 443-463. [pdf]
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Is anecdotal evidence more persuasive than statistical evidence?

Recent reviews of communication studies on the persuasiveness of evidence types have concluded that statistical evidence is more persuasive than anecdotal evidence. Cognitive psychological studies on the representativeness heuristic, however, have shown a large impact of anecdotal evidence (individuating information), and a small impact of statistical evidence (base rate information) on judgements. The difference between these conclusions can be explained by the research design of the psychological studies, which was in favour of anecdotal evidence. This article discusses more recent studies in cognitive psychology, and demonstrates that statistical evidence has more impact than the classic cognitive psychological studies suggested. This discussion brings back some consistency in results on the persuasiveness of anecdotal and statistical evidence, and also presents areas for future research.

  • Hornikx, J. (2007). Is anecdotal evidence more persuasive than statistical evidence? A comment on classic cognitive psychological studies. Studies in Communication Sciences, 7 (2), 151-164.
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Hoe goed zijn taalgebruikers in het selecteren van overtuigende evidentie?

Argumentatietheoretici hebben normatieve, kritische vragen geformuleerd om argumentkwaliteit te beoordelen. Deze vragen kunnen worden vertaald naar criteria voor hoge argumentkwaliteit. In recente onderzoeken is deze normatieve benadering van argumentkwaliteit (wat zou overtuigend moeten zijn?) vergeleken met descriptieve benaderingen (wat is overtuigend?). In dit artikel is deze vergelijking gemaakt voor gewone taalgebruikers. Argumentkwaliteit is daarbij onderzocht door te kijken naar soorten evidentie. De centrale vraag is dan: hoe goed zijn taalgebruikers in het selecteren van overtuigende evidentie? Deze vraag is beantwoord door de resultaten van Hornikx en Hoeken (2005) over de daadwerkelijke overtuigingskracht van evidentietypen af te zetten tegen een experiment waarin de verwachte overtuigingskracht van dezelfde evidentietypen voor dezelfde soort standpunten is gemeten. Proefpersonen maakten rangschikkingen van evidentietypen op basis van de verwachte overtuigingskracht om een ander van een aantal standpunten te overtuigen. Proefpersonen bleken behoorlijk goed in het selecteren van overtuigende evidentietypen: de evidentie waarvan ze verwachten dat deze (niet) overtuigend is, was meestal ook daadwerkelijk (niet) overtuigend.

  • Hornikx, J. (2007). Hoe goed zijn taalgebruikers in het selecteren van overtuigende evidentie? Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, 29 (3), 224-236. [pdf]
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Normatively strong and normatively weak expert evidence

I will give an overview of studies that investigated the persuasiveness of expert evidence as well as other types of evidence. One of these studies demonstrated that the persuasiveness of expert evidence was not the same in two different cultures. Section 3 will therefore discuss the relationship between expert evidence and the cultural background of people who judge expert evidence. Special attention will be paid to the question whether people from different cultures may vary in the persuasiveness of expert evidence that is normatively strong or normatively weak according to criteria from argumentation theory. The second part of this article will report on an experiment that investigated the persuasiveness of normatively strong or normatively weak expert evidence in France and the Netherlands.

  • Hornikx, J. (2007). Cultural differences in the persuasiveness of normatively strong and normatively weak expert evidence. In F. H. van Eemeren, J. A. Blair, C. A. Willard, & B. Garssen (Eds.), Proceedings of the sixth conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 645-650). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. [pdf]
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Appreciation and the comprehension of French in advertisements

The frequent use of the English language in advertisements all over the world has been explained in a number of ways. These reasons are discussed in Section 1.1. Subsequently, we discuss the reasons for using foreign languages other than English (1.2). As we will see, one of the reasons is the symbolic meaning of foreign languages. In Section 1.3, we propose a model of how the process of symbolic meaning association could work. The first part of this paper will end with a discussion about this symbolic meaning (1.4). In fact, some researchers have claimed that the literal meaning of words or sentences in a foreign language is not important (e.g., Kelly-Holmes 2000), whereas others have shown that this literal meaning seems to matter (e.g., Cheshire/Moser 1994). In the second part of the article, we present an empirical study that was set up to examine whether the appreciation of the use of a foreign language is affected by its comprehension.

  • Hornikx, J., & Starren, M. (2006). The relationship between the appreciation and the comprehension of French in Dutch advertisements. In R. Crijns, & C. Burgers (Eds.),Werbestrategien in Theorie und Praxis: Sprachliche Aspekte von deutschen und niederländischen Unternehmensdarstellungen und Werbekampagnen (pp. 129-145). Tostedt: Attikon Verlag. [pdf]
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“Wat voor eikel ben jij?”

De hevige reacties op de jongerencampagne “Wat voor eikel ben jij?” voorspellen niet veel goeds voor de effectiviteit ervan. Is de campagne inderdaad te duur, beschamend en normvervagend of juist goed aangepast aan jongeren? Goed beschouwd is de eikelcampagne best goed doordacht, maar wel een tikkeltje gewaagd.

  • Hornikx, J. (2006). “Wat voor eikel ben jij?”, Gewaagde, maar doordachte boodschapaanpassing aan de doelgroep. Tekstblad, 12 (2), 14-18. [pdf]
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Review of “Advertising as multilingual communication”

‘Rouges à lèvres’ in a German advertisement for lipsticks, Italian accents in a voice-over in a Dutch television commercial, English links on a Japanese website. With the increase in the number of multilingual advertisements and studies relating to their use and effects, the need for an insightful account of this domain has also increased. Advertising as multilingual communication has been anticipated by researchers in the field, and will certainly not disappoint them. Helen Kelly-Holmes’ book explains in a very well-written way how advertising discourse uses foreign languages – on the one end of a continuum – as a means of communication with speakers of a minority language in a country or – on the other end – as a linguistic symbol that creates positive associations in the minds of the receivers of the advertisement. Advertising as multilingual communication is well structured around a few domains in which multilingual advertising occurs, and benefits from a rich collection of examples that the author has gathered from a variety of media and sources over a number of years.

  • Hornikx, J. (2006). Review of “Advertising as multilingual communication” by Helen Kelly-Holmes. Communications, The European Journal of Communication Research, 31 (2), 247-249. [pdf]
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Measuring the effect of culture in experimental persuasive effects research

Studies that investigate the influence of culture on the persuasion process need methods and instruments to measure the effect of culture. As cultural studies have most frequently used values as a starting point for cross-cultural differences and similarities (see Section 2), values have also been used to measure culture. Persuasive effects research involving different cultures inherently encounters a number of methodological problems. In Section 3, I will describe these problems and some solutions, and propose the inclusion of context variables other than values as an alternative way of measuring the ef-fect of culture in experimental persuasive effects research.

  • Hornikx, J. (2006). Measuring the effect of culture in experimental persuasive effects research. In R. Crijns, & J. Thalheim (Eds.), Kooperation und Effizienz in der Unternehmenskommunikation: inner und außerbetriebliche Kommunikationsaspekte von Corporate Identity und Interkulturalität (pp. 195-204). Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag. [pdf]