The use of individualistic and collectivistic appeals in Taiwan and the U.S. primetime television commercials

Many studies had confirmed that commercials from different cultures reflected different cultural values. Most previous studies examined this issue with the concept of individualism and collectivism. However, none of them sought to explore this idea with Triandis (1995)'s four typologies of individualism and collectivism, which were horizontal individualism, vertical individualism, horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism. In this research, a content analysis was carried out to examine how commercials of Taiwan and the U.S. reflected its cultures respectively. Results showed that Taiwan commercials reflected more horizontal individualistic and vertical collectivistic values while the U.S commercials reflected more vertical individualistic values. Besides, product use conditions had a great effect on the use of advertising appeals in Taiwan. Commercials of personally used products tended to apply more individualistic values while shared products applied more collectivistic values.Advertisin