Content area
Full Text
Globalisation and Regionalisation
Edited by Stanley J. Paliwoda and Stephanie Slater
Introduction
In the consumer behaviour context, standardisation and localisation are two conflicting forces most clearly manifested in the cross-cultural research on global branding and advertising. Globalisation of country markets implies a research focus on global or international brands spanning countries and cultures. Advertising is an important element in their global marketing strategy. Thus, it is important for managers to know whether they can use standard advertisements in each of the places where their brands are sold or whether they need to "localise" the advertisements by modifying them to reflect the local culture and language. In diverse cross-cultural contexts, advertisers usually encounter similar types of problems arising from cultural variations; for example, an advertising appeal may be interpreted differently by people with different cultural backgrounds ([69] Sawyer and Howard, 1991; [4] Belch and Belch, 2004).
As a major technique in advertising, sex appeal has been widely used in mainstream consumer advertising in most countries. However, little is known about consumers' reactions to sex appeal advertising to different cultures ([19] Ford et al. , 2004). With the increasing degree of globalisation, brands are spanning across borders. On the one hand, international brand managers and advertisers are becoming more sensitive to cultural differences when designing advertising strategies in foreign countries; on the other hand, for cost concerns, they are also seeking techniques that can reach consumers across different cultures with minimum levels of localisation or adaptation ([38] Kanso and Nelson, 2007). As a major advertising technique, sex appeal has often featured in a brand's international advertising campaign. However, several key questions regarding the use of sex appeal in international advertising remain unclear. For example, can sex appeal be adopted in different cultures? Does sex appeal affect different types of advertising measures (e.g. brand or ad attitude) to the same degree in different cultures? To answer these questions, it is of great necessity and significance to compare consumer responses to sex appeal advertising in a cross-cultural context.
This study is intended to examine the differences between Chinese, Australian and US consumers on their responses to a number of carefully designed ads featuring different genders and different levels of sex appeal. This paper will focus on consumer attitudes towards...