INFLUENCE OF CULTURE IN ADVERTISING

ABSTRACT
As Mark Twain says that many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of
advertising, advertisement has become one of the most important products of culture in the
modern age. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential
customers to purchase or to consume products or service of a brand. Especially, advertising
language is characterized by cultural and age background.
Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international,
multi-national and global. Nowadays, since the economic globalization, the relationship between
advertisement and culture become more closely. This paper gives a detailed analysis of culturespecific in advertisement translation and then probes into some effective methods of its
translation
As organizations increasingly expand overseas, they are exposed to many new markets and thus
inter cultural communication continues to play an essential role in their success in these new
markets. Cultural knowledge and understanding is very important in business as culture
influences every aspect of marketing. Advertising as a part of marketing communication is a
worldwide business activity today. As marketers venture into countries they have previously not
explored, and as media proliferates across countries, advertising continues to gain momentum
world over. This means, that marketers need to have a good understanding of the target countrys
cultural characteristics, like language, religion, values, etc. when developing their international
advertising strategy.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

American Marketing Association defines advertising as the non-personal communication of
information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by
identified sponsors through the various media. However, whatever the strategies advertiser takes,
language is an essential carrier of inspiration. There are many unsuccessful cases of
advertisement translation which lead no sale for product. The main reason is that the translator
doesn't have adequate understanding of target culture, and is limited by superficial meaning of
the text. In order to attract the target especially non-domestic consumers, it is a significant task to
be aware of the differences between Chinese culture and western culture, and the key to translate
advertisement is to have the same strong influence on the people who read the translated version.
The trend of extending local companies globally has been drastically increasing during recent
economical developments however the phenomena is considered to take origin in the eighteenth
Century and the major boom towards globalization started after second world war (Mueller:
2011). Companies need to introduce their product/services in global markets to peruse and
convince consumers by communicating the main features of product/services and advertising
serves the basic purpose of communicating message effectively across the globe.
As the world is moving towards globalizations therefore many researchers and publications
argue that products should be standardized across world along with standardization in
advertising, which will in return decrease the influence of national cultures in advertisements
However on the other hand large number of authors and researchers including Geert Hofstede
and Markie de Mooij believe that national culture plays very important role in building
perception, thinking and behaviors of consumers.
The message can be communicated more effectively by incorporating cultural values in
advertisements instead of standardizing the advertisements across global market and
communication plays effective role in interacting consumer through advertising. According to De
Mooij if we want to know how advertising works across cultures, well first have to learn how
communication works (De Mooij 2010:97). In advertising communication process, the basic
purpose is to inform and persuade the customer about the product. It is also important for
business units to know about the liking, disliking, and preferences by the customer (Mukesh,
Ranju: 2009).
RESEARCH QUESTION
How are English advertisements in China affected by cultural differences?

LITERATURE REVIEW
Most scholars have determined that cultural values in Western countries, and the Americas,
manifest a cultures level of individualism to largely emphasize on the I being conscious of
private opinions and self-actualization. Oppositely, collectivistic societies, including Asia, Africa,
and Latin America, mostly express we being conscious of the relationship with groups.
The dimension of individualism vs. collectivism has received a great deal of attention by
researchers who examine cross-cultural advertising and marketing. For example, Zhang and Gelb
(1996) hypothesized that U.S. ads would use more culturally congruent individualistic appeals
than culturally incongruent collectivistic appeals, while China would follow an opposite pattern.
The results showed that the advertising appeals varied from culture to culture as predicted.
Lin (2001) compared and explored cultural differences in American and Chinese advertising,
choosing three U.S. TV networks (NBC, ESPN, and A&E) and three Chinese TV stations
(Channel 1 and 2 of China Central Television, and a local channel of Beijing TV Station) to
analyze primetime program content. The results were not surprising. Collectivistic appeals were
much more powerful, while individualism and independence were paid less attention in Chinese
commercials than in U.S. ads.
Hofstede (1991) suggested that high context cultures would generally be associated with
collectivism, whereas, in contrast, low context cultures would typically be correlated with
individualism. In collectivistic countries, messages flow more easily because of the interpersonal
relationships within a group, while there is more need for explicit and direct communication in
individualistic societies.
Another useful, easy-to-grasp concept to consider when teaching students how culture affects
advertising appeals is a hard sell versus a soft sell. Mueller (1987) compared advertisements in
Japan and the U.S. for similar products to examine whether advertising tended to reflect cultural
values of these two countries. She found that Eastern advertising, like that in Japan, tended to be
less direct and the appeals had more emotional mood and atmosphere than Western styles of
advertising, such as in the U.S. Japanese ads lacked hard sell appeals because indirect, implicit,
and nonverbal communication styles had been embedded as a result of high context cultural
background. They preferred higher usage of soft sell (indirect and image-based) appeals than
hard sell (direct and information based) themes, which were used more frequently in U.S.
advertisements. In contrast, Western-style advertising appeals were designed to convey more
comparative and competitive statements to emphasize a brands superiority.
Okazaki, Mueller and Taylor (2010) also explored how soft sell and hard sell appeals impacted
the effectiveness of global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) between the U.S. and Japan.
The researchers selected representative advertisements and conducted a quasi-experimental study
in both countries. In the U.S., hard sell appeals were more effective than soft sell appeals in the
areas of consumer attitude, believability, irritation, and purchase intention. Japanese respondents
unexpectedly rated the hard sell advertisements considerably higher in terms of believability,
purchase intention, and attitude toward the ad. The authors suggested that soft sell appeals with

more image-oriented messages were more suitable for providing implicit and symbolic
information, including global brand creditability and quality, social responsibility, prestige, and
relative price.
Products are designed on the basis of customer needs of specific country and country based
promotional efforts are done in international marketing (Paul: 2008). Advertising is one of the
marketing tools and paid form of communication designed to pursue the consumer (Grewal,
Levey: 2010).
It is social environment through which culture is learned and derived rather than inheritance and
genes. Each culture has different coding of mind depending upon group of people which belong
to that specific culture and the coding levels differentiate according to different cultures. For
example each culture has different gender roles, social class, dressing/dressing by profession,
habits of eating. A culture can be identified as corporate culture, national culture or age
culture. However this research is based on national level of culture. (Hofstede, 2003: Mooij,
1998).
Understanding cultures is increasingly important for global advertising and Hofstede model of
national is applicable to global advertising and marketing. The model explains various concepts
of self, identity, personality which further helps in devising branding strategies (De Mooij,
2010). Standardized advertisement across global market is not as much effective as adaptative
strategies for local markets; therefore it has become increasingly important to understand the
cultures (Dow, 2005). So cultural values depicted in advertising are integrated part of consumer
self rather than environmental factor (De Mooij, 2010). Consumer self-identity (culture, image,
values) along with social and mental processes (previously described in consumer buying
behavior) affect the advertising appeal and style. (De Mooij, 2010).

DISCUSSIONS
The Relationship between Culture and Advertising Language
Obviously, cultural values have laid a strong foundation for people in different cultures. In
advertising, it is strongly believed that the most effective advertisements are those that best
express and affirm core cultural values. Advertisements generally contain specific meanings of a
particular culture. Therefore, when they are translated to another language, knowledge of the
different values and customs in different cultures is essential to the creation of effective and
fruitful advertisements. So, translation of advertisements is, in a larger sense, a means of cross cultural communication. What advertisers and translators should do is to make the
advertisements consistent with values of the targeted people. If not, they are likely to be rejected.
Language and Culture
There are various cultural types such as national culture and foreign culture, while they have
common feature that almost each culture exists in a form of language. Although lots of factors
result in the formation of culture, its spread relies on some certain forms. The practice indicates
that language use is heavily tinted with its culture. We can infer that a language not only
expresses facts, ideals, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also
reflects the peoples attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks etc. In a word, language expresses cultural
reality.
Advertisement and Culture
Advertisement and culture have reciprocal and bidirectional relationship. From macro level,
advertisement industry accelerates the development of social economy. From micro level , the
advertisement is one of the agents which lead to the reform of culture. Contemporary culture
contains the advertisement; meanwhile, it is also the disseminator and creator of the culture.
While publicizing products or services, the advertisement unconsciously outputs some cultural
awareness and changes peoples thinking ways or values.
Advertisement Language and Culture
Advertisement language is the core of an ads. Social culture influences even limits this kind of
language and expression, meanwhile, the advertisement language contains and reflects the social
culture. The advertisement exists in a society which means philosophical concept, thinking
mode, cultural psychology, moral caliber and cultural habits of a nation certainly have a great
effect on the advertisement language. In the fact, people tend to accept such messages that arouse
their sense of identity.
For instance, the publicity of a product or service closely related to sexy life sometimes in
English advertisement. In order to increase its allure, we can find such words as condoms or sex
in it. Although western people are accustomed to it, these kinds of advertisements have definitely
surpassed the cultural psychological endurance of common people in China. So apprehension of
the advertisement language should be based on local culture.

Advertisement across Cultures

Advertising reflects the pattern of our thinking, the way we do things in our daily life i.e. eating,
relaxing, talking, working, having fun, things which moves us.
A number of researches are done for analyzing cross culture advertising mostly through content
analysis and surveys to know which advertisement practice can work better in which country.
The values incorporated in advertisement matching with values of the customer leads towards
more successful advertising. Below is the conceptual analysis of Hofstedes Model on basis of
varying consumer behaviors.
Hofstedes Dimensions of National culture and Advertising
In the publication Culture and Organizations: Software of the minds, Geert Hofstede explains
culture as; It is the collective programming of mind that distinguish the members of one group
or category of people from others (Hofstede 2005: p 4)
In social anthropology culture is not only patterns of thinking acting and feeling but also include
all the menial and ordinary things in life i.e. eating, showing, greeting, certain physical distance ,
loving etc (Hofstede 2005).
Hofstedes cultural dimensions are of great importance because before that no cultural model
was developed to study consumer behavior. Hofstede model of national culture distinguish the
cultures according to four dimensions: power distance (PD), individualism/Collectivism (IDV),
Uncertainty avoidance (UA), Masculinity/femininity (MAS) and long term/short term orientation
(LTO) (De Mooij: 2010). Below is the application of De Mooijs theory on Hofstedes cultural
dimension however it would be discussed on bases of four cultural dimensions as no score is
available for long term Orientation (LTO), therefore this dimension would not be studied for
cultural differences.

CONCLUSIONS
Cultural differences have become a non-ignorable factor in advertisement. In order to attract
even stimulate potential customers, the advertisers make their efforts to produce creative and
memorable works. As the integration of world economy, it is an urgent task that advertisers
should make clear of the features of each culture especially target culture. Meanwhile, the goal of
advertisement translation is to persuade and influence target consumers abroad to buy a product
or service. Therefore, translators must acquaint themselves with target consumers way of
thinking, the life environment, cultural habits and etc. On the basis of analyzing, culture-specific
in advertisement translation, this paper has shown the influence of cultural differences on it and
appropriate methods of translation.
Different languages have different culture backgrounds. Without a good command of different
cultures, its impossible to realize a perfect communication between different languages. Cultural
differences are caused by different view on value, belief, esthetics, morality concepts and so on.
Advertisement translation requires translators to be fully aware of the differences, get rid of
culture influence to fit target language, know well the consumers psychology and consumers
behavior, master target language usages and cultural specifics.
The cultural differences between English and Chinese calls for the application of domestication
principle, which is necessary and beneficial. With the adoption of domestication principle,
translators could make the translation follow the thinking habit of target language cultures and
conform to foreign readers specific mode of thinking. The effectiveness of domestication
principle in English and Chinese translation contributes a lot to successful cross-cultural
communication.

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