The globalisation of economy forces multinational companies to standardise their advertisement campaigns to reduce costs. Some studies showed that the effectiveness of identical advertisements varies from country to country. The present experimental study investigates whether the appeal to values which are dominant in France and in the Netherlands in an advertisement enhances its force of persuasion towards the respective national audiences. Two versions of a message advertising a watch were created: one appeals to a low uncertainty avoidance culture and the other to a high uncertainty avoidance culture (Hofstede 1991). The respondents indicated their attitudes towards the watch and the advertisement, their purchase intention, as well as the importance that they attribute to certain values and their perception of the advertisement message. The rejection of the hypothesis can be explained either by the remarkable scores of the respondents on the lists of values, or by the perception of the advertisement message by the French respondents.
- Hornikx, J., & Starren, M. (2004). Publicités en France et aux Pays-Bas: peut-on standardiser ou faut-il adapter? Studies in Communication Sciences, 4 (1), 219-233. [pdf]